White House Watch: Trump Ups It A Notch

Thursday, October 06, 2016

Donald Trump has gained another point on Hillary Clinton in the wake of Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate.

The latest Rasmussen Reports White House Watch telephone and online survey of Likely U.S. Voters finds Trump with a 43% to 41% lead over Clinton. Yesterday, he was ahead 42% to 41%. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson again earns eight percent (8%) of the vote, while three percent (3%) prefer the Green Party’s Jill Stein. Two percent (2%) like some other candidate, and four percent (4%) are undecided.

Trump has been edging back all week. He was five points ahead of Clinton going into their first debate last week but then fell behind by three after widespread criticism of his debate performance. By this past Monday, however, the two major party candidates were in a near tie, and Trump has gained a point on Clinton each day since then.

Eighty-one percent (81%) say in the latest survey that they are already certain how they will vote, and Trump posts an equally narrow 49% to 47% lead among these voters. Among those who say they still could change their minds, it’s Trump 31%, Clinton 29%, Johnson 27% and Stein 13%.

Rasmussen Reports updates its White House Watch survey daily Monday through Friday at 8:30 am based on a three-day rolling average of 1,500 Likely U.S. Voters. This is the first survey in which one of the survey nights follows the vice presidential debate.

The survey of 1,500 Likely Voters was conducted on October 3-5, 2016 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 2.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Trump reportedly claimed $1 billion in losses on his taxes in 1995, cancelling out years of income tax payments. Democrats say he’s a tax shirker; Republicans say he was a genius at using the tax code to keep his businesses going. We’ll tell you what voters think at 10:30 this morning.

Both major party candidates get 77% support from the voters in their respective parties. Trump has 15% support from Democrats and leads 40% to 28% among voters not affiliated with either major party. Clinton gets 12% of the Republican vote.

Johnson earns four percent (4%) GOP support, three percent (3%) of the Democratic vote and 18% of unaffiliateds. Stein remains in low single digits in all three groups.

Democrats (90%) are more certain of their vote at this stage than Republicans (83%) and unaffiliated voters (66%) are.

Trump leads by 11 points among men but trails by five among women.

Clinton remains ahead among those under 40, while older voters continue to favor Trump. The older the voter, the more certain they are of how they will vote.

The Democrat has 66% support among blacks; just 12% of those voters favor her GOP rival. Trump has a double-digit lead among whites, and the two remain in a near tie among other minority voters. Other minorities are less certain of their vote than blacks and whites.

Democrats are more enthusiastic about one-party rule in Washington, D.C., than Republicans and unaffiliated voters are.

Voters are a bit more likely this year to say the vice presidential debate is important to their vote, putting it nearly even with the presidential debates in that regard. The next debate between Clinton and Trump is on Sunday.

Just 29% think the country is headed in the right direction.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/publ...se_watch_oct06