Beltway insiders prefer Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump by overwhelming margins, a new poll conducted by Echelon Insights for the Washington Examiner reveals.
Democrat Hillary Clinton won 62 percent of Washington elites polled, compared to 22 percent supporting Republican nominee Donald Trump. Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson pulled in 3 percent, while the remainder (14 percent) said they would support some other candidate, not vote, or were undecided. (The poll was conducted before conservative independent Evan McMullin entered the race.)
Echelon Insights conducted a scientific survey of 400 Washington elites: all those sampled live in the D.C. area, are registered voters, read or watch the news daily, and are employed with incomes of at least $75,000 for respondents over age 40 or on a commensurate scale for younger respondents.
The results indicate that the Beltway class is far closer to Clinton than the rest of the country is. While the former secretary of state and New York senator leads in almost all national polls, she averages well below 50 percent. Clinton’s average lead in national polls that include Johnson is about 7 points, according to RealClearPolitics. Her 40-point lead among elites is far larger and about equal to her lead in Maryland polls.
Clinton won the support of nearly one in five Republican insiders in the poll. And the same proportion of Republicans said they would support a minor candidate, not vote, or were still undecided. This is about triple the support Clinton gets from Republicans in the rest of the country — a recent Reuters poll showed her pulling in only 6 percent of Republicans nationwide.
Clinton beat Trump 50 percent to 19 percent among Washington insiders who call themselves independent. (These samples of subpopulations, have a significantly higher margin of error than the full sample does and can only be seen as rough approximations.)
The most telling difference was in support among each party’s ideological base. The poll’s sample included about 30 percent self-identified conservatives, 30 percent liberals and 40 percent moderates. Clinton won nearly 90 percent of liberals, while Trump carried only about 37 percent of conservatives.
Among moderates, Clinton won 60 percent to 16 percent.
An enthusiasm gap was also evident. About 27 percent of Clinton voters said they supported her “reluctantly,” while 36 percent of Trump voters said they supported him reluctantly. Probably reflecting politically homeless right-of-center voters unwilling to back Trump, a majority of Johnson’s small share said they were reluctant in support of him.
In the 2016 campaign, Bernie Sanders and Trump have jointly pushed Clinton towards an anti-free-trade stance, but Washington elites persist in their support of free trade, the poll showed.
Most of the insiders polled (53 percent) said free trade was “generally good” for the U.S. or “an unmitigated good.” Nineteen percent agreed with the statement that free trade has “been more harmful than beneficial.” The remainder were either unsure or see free trade as a wash.
Echelon also asked the D.C. insiders if “the success of ‘outsider”‘candidates in 2016 running on anti-Washington messages made” respondents feel more or less “out of touch with the rest of the country.”
About half of the respondents (49 percent) said the 2016 elections didn’t change their view of their connection with the rest of America, while 28 percent said the election made them feel more out of touch. Only 19 percent said it made them feel more in touch with the rest of the country.
