Hillary Clinton enters October with an 11-point lead over Donald Trump in Colorado, where the Republican presidential nominee is set to hold two campaign events on Monday.
According to a new Monmouth University poll of likely voters in the Silver State, Clinton edges Trump 49-38 percent with 7 percent of respondents backing Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and 3 percent supporting Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
The latest poll results counter a series of surveys released in late September that showed the race tightening in Colorado. Ahead of the Monmouth poll on Monday, Trump carried a slim 0.5 percentage-point lead over his Democratic opponent in the RealClearPolitics average of polls in the crucial battleground state.
Much of Clinton’s lead stems from her 23-point advantage among independent voters, which has grown from 12 percentage points in July. The former secretary of state has also put significant distance between herself and Trump among Hispanic, black and Asian voters, among whom she leads 71-17 percent, and she carries a slight lead among white voters — 45-42 percent.
While Clinton has seen a slight decline in her support among women, she now leads Trump by 7 percentage points (48-41 percent) among men in Colorado. Trump had previously carried a single-point lead among male voters, who make up a large portion of his base.
Following the first presidential debate last Monday, twice as many voters indicated Clinton is temperamentally fit to be president compared to 31 percent who said Trump has the right temperament to be commander in chief.
The Monmouth University poll of 400 likely voters in Colorado was conducted from Sept. 29-Oct. 2. Results contain a margin of error plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.
