Polls indicate Hillary Clinton got a boost from the DNC. Candidates’ favorability ratings also improve after party conventions. And Donald Trump is polling strongly among “racially resentful” voters. This is HuffPollster for Monday, August 1, 2016.
CLINTON RETAKES THE LEAD IN POST-DNC POLLS - The first few polls conducted completely after the Democratic convention indicate that Clinton is benefitting from the party’s week in the spotlight. A CBS poll recorded a 4-point bounce for Clinton, which, combined with a 3-point drop for Trump since their last poll, means that Clinton leads by 7 points, 46-39. Morning Consult, which had Trump up by 4 points last week, has Clinton up by 3 now. The HuffPost Pollster chart shows Clinton up by about 4 points, compared to a narrower 2-point margin last week at this time.
The convention bump might be smaller in battleground states - Anthony Salvanto: “Clinton now stands at 43 percent support, ahead of Trump’s 41 percent. Trump had led 42 percent to 41 percent last week….Voters in this study across eleven battleground states had been interviewed previously, and Clinton gained with Democrats who’d been undecided before the convention, plus some other voters who’d been unsure, but virtually no one is vacillating back and forth directly between Trump and Clinton...Clinton and the Democrats did not entirely find resonance with the mood of the electorate: 40 percent said they liked how the Democrats described the state of things in America today, but 45 percent disliked it, including most independents, many of whom are voting for Donald Trump.” [CBS]
As with Trump’s convention bump, Clinton’s might not last either - HuffPollster: “And just as with last week’s polls, you shouldn’t get too excited or upset about sudden shifts. Convention bounces are common, and often temporary.…Trump...seemed to gain a few points off the convention, and it was enough to make the race nearly tied in the HuffPost Pollster averages, regardless of whether third-party candidates were included in the polls. Now that Clinton and the Democrats have had their turn, the polls are likely to show her in the lead, although the main question will be by how much. Some polls might not show a shift in the race. We’ll have to wait a few days to find out. If it becomes clear that Clinton’s convention bounce is substantially larger than Trump’s was, that’s probably a good sign for Democrats. If it’s about the same size as Trump’s, expect the race to remain very close.” [HuffPost]
Post-convention favorable rating boosts might also be temporary - Harry Enten: “Donald Trump’s favorable rating is now roughly equal to Hillary Clinton’s favorable rating….Sometimes how voters view a candidate immediately after the conventions sticks — sometimes it doesn’t. (That’s something to keep in mind as we watch Clinton’s numbers now that her convention has wrapped up.)….The post-convention favorability polls have been a hair more predictive than the pre-convention polls, but I wouldn’t make too much of the difference — a number of candidates who had great conventions ended up finding popularity fleeting afterward. Favorability ratings can change a good deal from the convention period to Election Day. That is likely to be even more true in 2016; the parties held their conventions much earlier than usual this year, in July rather than late August or early September — so there’s more campaign left to go than is typical post-conventions.” [538]
RACIAL RESENTMENT PREDICTS TRUMP SUPPORT - Michael Tesler: “With the notable exception of Pat Buchanan’s campaigns to preserve white cultural hegemony in the 1990s, few Republican candidates for president have attempted to directly distinguish themselves from their GOP rivals on matters of race and ethnicity. Until now….Trump has been willing to go where most Republican presidential candidates haven’t. That might have made anti-minority sentiments a more potent force in the 2016 GOP primaries than in primaries past…. Republicans who scored highest on racial resentment were about 30 percentage points more likely to support Trump than their more moderate counterparts in the bottom quartile of the party in racial conservatism. That pattern is noticeably different from 2008 and 2012, when racial conservatism had a slightly negative relationship with support for the eventual GOP nominees. The upshot is that Trump was significantly more popular among the most racially resentful Republican voters than were his immediate predecessors, John McCain and Mitt Romney.” [WashPost]
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MONDAY’S ‘OUTLIERS’ - Links to the best of news at the intersection of polling, politics and political data:
-Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were chosen as nominees by just 9 percent of Americans. [NYT]
-Kathleen Searles, Martha Humphries Ginn and Jonathan Nickens analyze television coverage of presidential polls. [POQ]
-Michael T. Heaney reports the results of a survey of DNC protesters. [WashPost]
-Bethany Albertson and Shana Kushner Gadarian argue that anxiety over terrorism will help Clinton, not Trump. [Vox]
-David Rothschild finds a solid post-convention bounce for Hillary Clinton. [HuffPost]
-Question order doesn’t matter in online surveys if the questions are on the same page. [SurveyMonkey]