Poll: Clinton up in Florida, New Hampshire; extends lead on electoral map
Hillary Clinton has extended her lead in Florida and is now up five points over Donald Trump, 45 percent to 40 percent; she led by three points in June.
And Clinton now has a dominant nine-point lead in New Hampshire, 45 percent to 36 percent, a lead that has her threatening to take that battleground state off the board entirely, just as last week, a double-digit lead in Virginia made that state look like anything but a toss-up.
In Georgia - usually a Republican state not typically considered a battleground - Trump leads 45-41 but Clinton has things closer than in most presidential races, down just four points.
Much as in other states we've surveyed lately, Clinton has moved out to lead despite relatively low numbers on many attributes and voters' doubts about her truthfulness. But voters feel Trump is even lower on a few other key measures: only 29 percent in Florida, for instance, feel he has good judgment and temperament, and 71 percent say that does not. That includes four in ten Republicans (though most of them are voting for him nonetheless).
Meanwhile, 54 percent of Florida voters call Trump's controversial comments generally "irresponsible." Twenty-one percent feel Trump is just joking and that things get blown out of proportion, and another 25 percent - many of whom are reliable Trump supporters - feel Trump tells it like it is.
In Florida, Trump has an enormous edge on the ability to bring change (66 percent say he can, versus 37 percent who say that of Clinton) and Trump leads Clinton on ability to "fix the economy" - though voters have doubts about both in this regard.
Trump is comparably close to Clinton on listening "to people like you." Just under half feel Clinton is not telling the truth about events during her time as secretary of state. The issues that have weighed on Clinton's campaign are seen as relevant: over half of Florida voters say the way in which Clinton talks about her email and private server matters to them.
Still, the views on Trump's judgment appear to weigh on him, and he continues to get low marks on ability to be commander-in-chief. Taken together, these findings show just how much the campaign has turned on views of Trump, personally, and those metrics, and less so on policy or on Clinton's own attributes.
In New Hampshire the numbers suggest Trump hasn't much room to grow, at least as of right now. Trump is losing New Hampshire women by a wide 51 percent to 29 percent spread, which is big enough for Clinton to easily overcome his slight edge with men.
Among women in New Hampshire, zero percent of those not with him are an affirmative "yes" and a scant nine percent say "maybe" they'd consider him going forward. Ninety-one percent say they never would.
And it also highlights the kinds of trouble he's had among voters of his own party: he's at 78 percent support among Republicans, compared to Clinton's 93 percent of Democrats.
Trump hasn't made any headway since June in allaying the concerns of Florida voters who were put off by his campaign. Back in June half of them said watching the Trump campaign scared them, and those numbers are effectively the same today. The number of voters not with Trump who'd consider him has also slipped, from 16 percent in June to 10 percent now.
The movement in Florida, such as it is, has come from Clinton pulling in those previously undecided. Although she does get a few more Republicans now than Trump does Democrats, both of their support bases have remained largely locked in, and it remains a campaign in which voters feel they don't have a lot of choice. That may in turn explain why there have been so few outright swing voters.
In Florida, one-third feel they're choosing a candidate despite not liking either one, and just two percent feel they have two good choices between Trump and Clinton. In New Hampshire, that number is just one percent.
And in a year that's already provided so many counterintuitive findings, here we find that authenticity - often believed to be a valued attribute for a candidate - doesn't always correspond with who is ahead. Seven in ten voters feel Trump is showing who he really is on the campaign trail, but he is trailing. A majority feel Hillary Clinton isn't showing who she really is, but she's leading nonetheless.
So the overall electoral map, based on state-by-state polling throughout the last few weeks, is starting to show a much tougher path for Donald Trump now: He cannot rely simply on flipping a few tight states to get the 270 electoral votes needed to win, but will need to outright reverse a string of Clinton leads to do so.
