A poll storm of critical states in the presidential election reflected a tightening race the last week, but they also showed a large battleground that could indicate trouble for the nominees in places their party is accustomed to winning easily.
The surveys say that the traditional swing states of Florida, Nevada, and New Hampshire are up for grabs. But they also reveal that Arizona and Georgia—Republican strongholds for years, but potential vulnerabilities for Donald Trump because of demographic shifts this election—are neck-and-neck. And even the blue state of Michigan, a Rust Belt member with the sort of blue-collar electorate for which Trump has made a play nationally, has a slimming margin for Hillary Clinton.
A large NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday showed the following spreads between Trump and Clinton in a three-or-more-candidate race, accounting for Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green party candidate Jill Stein:
Arizona: Trump +2
Georgia: Trump +2
New Hampshire: Clinton +2
Nevada: Trump +1
In a two-way race, only one state, Nevada, flips to the other major-party candidate. Notably, Johnson cracks 10 percent support in two states: Georgia and the libertarian-tinged New Hampshire, where he secures 15 percent and keeps both Trump and Clinton below the 40 percent mark.
Two polls of Florida from JMC Analytics and CBS News/YouGov essentially split the difference between the Republican and the Democrat: Trump leads in the first by four points and Clinton leads in the latter by two, accounting for a four-way race in both.
And in Michigan, Clinton’s lead in a four-way race is just six points, according to a poll commissioned by FOX 2 Detroit. It’s a five-point margin in a two-way race. In 2012, President Obama defeated Mitt Romney by more than nine points.
The one shock result from state polls in the last two days was in Ohio, where CBS News/YouGov showed Clinton with a seven-point lead, 46-39 percent, in a four-way race. The survey is the only one of the state conducted entirely in September thus far—in August, Clinton led by at least four points in four polls, but was tied in another and actually trailed by four in a Quinnipiac release. According to the RealClearPolitics average, Clinton’s lead in the state is 1.8 points.
