Poll: Hillary Clinton narrowly leads Donald Trump in North Carolina
Hillary Clinton is narrowly leading Donald Trump in the battleground state of North Carolina, according to a survey released by Suffolk University.
The poll found Clinton has a slight lead over Trump by 2 percentage points -- 45 percent to 43 percent. Clinton went up 4 percentage points since Suffolk’s survey last month and Trump lost a point.
Five percent of likely voters in North Carolina said they support Libertarian Gary Johnson, 5 percent said they’re undecided and 2 percent refused to answer the question about their preference.
Another poll, from NBC News, Wall Street Journal and Marist College, found Clinton leading by a slightly larger margin in North Carolina. In that poll, she bests Trump by four points among likely voters, 45 percent to 41 percent, in a contest that includes third-party candidates; in a two-way contest, Clinton leads Trump by 5 points (48 percent to 43 percent).
Asked by Suffolk if the Access Hollywood video that surfaced last Friday changed their opinion of Trump, about 14 percent said it did and nearly 70 percent said it did not. About 14 percentage said they didn’t see the video from 2005 in which Trump lewdly describes his behavior toward women.
Likely voters were split over whether they view President Obama favorably.
About 70 percent of voters said they watched the second presidential debate last Sunday and nearly a third said they skipped it. Forty-two percent said Clinton won the debate while 40 percent said Trump was the winner.
The poll found GOP incumbent Sen. Richard Burr has a slight edge over his Democratic challenger Deborah Ross 40 percent to 36 percent.
More voters, 20 percent, named terrorism and national security as the most important issue facing the next president while 19 percent named jobs and the economy.
Nearly two-thirds of likely voters said Clinton will likely be elected president while less than a quarter said the same about Trump. President Obama won the state in 2008, but Mitt Romney carried it in the 2012 election.
The poll surveyed 500 likely voters in North Carolina between Oct. 10 and 12 with a 4.4 percentage point margin of error.
