Four polls conducted prior to the first presidential debate suggested that the race in potentially decisive Colorado had become a dead heat: Trump narrowly led in two polls, while Clinton narrowly led in the other two. But the first poll of Colorado conducted since the first debate finds that Clinton has a big lead in the state:
A pre-debate Quinnipiac poll found that Trump had made the race close in Colorado largely by cutting down Clinton’s lead among white college-educated voters from 25 points to just 5 points. The post-debate Monmouth poll suggests Clinton has reversed that trend: She now leads Trump among all voters with a college degree by 20 points (58 percent to 38 percent).
The Monmouth poll was conducted from Thursday, September 29 to Sunday, October 2, so the survey results captured voters’ reactions not only to the debate but also Trump’s erratic post-debate behavior.
During the debate, Clinton criticized Trump for calling former Miss Universe Alicia Machado “Miss Piggy” because she gained 60 pounds and “Miss Housekeeping” because she is Hispanic. Trump went out of his way to bring up Machado in an interiew the morning after the debate. “She gained a massive amount of weight. It was a real problem,” Trump told Fox and Friends.
Democrats spent the next few days pushing a pre-planned public relations campaign about Machado, and the Republican nominee responded with a pre-dawn tweet Friday: “Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?” Machado was accused of being an accomplice to a murder attempt, something she didn’t deny in an interview on CNN last week.
It remains to be seen whether the Monmouth poll is an outlier or a leading indicator that Clinton has regained a big lead. So far, most state-level and national polls have shown just a small movement toward Clinton since the debate.
