Hillary Clinton has stabilized her lead over the last few days, just before voters flock to the polls on Tuesday, according to a new survey released Monday.
Clinton leads Trump 47-43 in a Washington Post/ABC poll that was conducted Wednesday through Saturday. Clinton has bounced back from a dead-heat race for the White House after a tough 10-day stretch, and is now matching the lead President Obama had among minorities that helped seal his 2012 victory.
The data shows both candidates could have significant advantages for the Tuesday election as Clinton has won over people who have already voted 49-41 percent, but Trump’s campaign is doing better among likely voters in key states that could swing the electoral college in his favor. Among the likely voters who plan to go to the polls on Election Day, 45 percent are for Trump and 43 percent for Clinton.
However, Trump leads 51-41 among the 336 people sampled from the battleground states of Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Ohio, which suggests he has a chance in states that could make the most difference for his campaign. Clinton has a 13 point lead in blue-leaning states and Trump has a 7 point lead in red-leaning states.
Voters still appear devoted to their chosen parties, with nearly 90 percent of Democrats are supporting Clinton and 84 percent of Republicans are for Trump in a four-candidate race, and is about the same in a head-to-head race. However, those numbers are lower than Obama’s 92 percent support and Mitt Romney’s 93 percent in exit polling for the 2012 election.
Nearly 8 in 10 likely voters said they will accept the election results no matter who wins despite the Republican candidate sparking controversy through his hesitancy, including approximately 7 in 10 Trump supporters and 9 in 10 for Clinton.
Despite gaining the support of the majority of the country’s voters, both major party candidates are the most unpopular in the poll’s history. Sixty-percent have an unfavorable view of Trump to Clinton’s 56 percent, a reversal from last week where Clinton got 60 percent and Trump was at 58 percent in the same category. Half of respondents said they had a strongly unfavorable view of Trump and 46 percent said the same about Clinton.
The telephone-based poll of 2,854 voters was conducted Nov. 2-5 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 points. For the sample of 1,937 likely voters surveyed, the error margin is plus or minus 2.5 points.
