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Trump faces uphill climb in swing states
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Ballotpedia's battleground poll, 2016
 Date: November 8, 2016 |
Winner: Donald Trump (R) Hillary Clinton (D) • Jill Stein (G) • Gary Johnson (L) • Vice presidential candidates |
Important dates • Nominating process • Ballotpedia's 2016 Battleground Poll • Polls • Debates • Presidential election by state • Ratings and scorecards |
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June 29, 2016
By Jim Barnes
New Ballotpedia Battleground polls in seven swing states show that Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, faces some major hurdles if he’s going to overcome his Democratic rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in the general election.
The surveys, conducted for Ballotpedia by Evolving Strategies and Opinion Access Corporation, find that Trump trails Clinton in all seven states: Florida, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. The 2012 Republican standard bearer, Mitt Romney, only managed to carry North Carolina, and his defeat in the other six states sealed President Barack Obama’s re-election.
Comparing these Ballotpedia Battleground findings to the 2012 presidential election results and exit polls in these seven states underscores some of Trump’s challenges. In a two-way trial heat match-up with Clinton, Trump currently trails Clinton in all seven states, but the presumptive Democratic nominee commands an outright majority in only one—Florida, the most demographically diverse state in this bunch. These polls also show that there are relatively large numbers of voters in all seven of these states who say that they would vote for neither of the two major party nominees.
When Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson is added to the general election trial heats, 5-8 percent of the polls’ respondents still say they wouldn’t vote for any of the candidates. Johnson’s potential impact on the contest between Trump and Clinton is not decisive one way or the other: The Libertarian tends to draw support from both of the major party candidates in roughly equal measure. However, Johnson’s candidacy does appear to tighten the race in Iowa.
The gaps between Trump’s standing among independents and women in these 2016 battleground polls and Romney’s performance in the 2012 exit polls in these seven states among these same groups indicate where the GOP nominee needs to improve his support. They are also a reminder that the voters who show up to cast ballots in a general election are different from the ones who participate in GOP presidential primaries and caucuses.
Among independents in the seven swing states, a group that Trump probably needs to carry if he has any hope of capturing the White House, the battleground polls show that he currently narrowly leads Clinton in only North Carolina and Virginia. (And given the higher margin of error among polling subgroups, Trump’s advantage among independents—like Clinton’s edge in the other five states—could be negligible.) Still, it’s worth remembering that Romney beat Obama among independents in four of these states in 2012: North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Romney’s tally among independents in the Tarheel State, one that he won, was 57 percent according to the exit poll conducted by Edison Research for the television networks and Associated Press. In the Ballotpedia Battleground poll in North Carolina, Trump is currently winning a plurality of about 41 percent of the independents in the two-candidate trial heat.
In Pennsylvania, a state where Trump handily carried half of the self-identified independents who voted in the GOP presidential primary, the Ballotpedia Battleground poll shows that he’s currently only winning a little more than a third of the independents. In 2012, Romney narrowly edged Obama among independents in Pennsylvania, but he still lost the state to Obama, 47-52 percent.
Among men, Trump is faring a bit better. In the battleground polling, he leads Clinton among men in four of the states: Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia. But once again, with the exception of Iowa, his support among men is still lags what Romney commanded in the 2012 presidential election in Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
The much bigger challenge for Trump is among the likely female electorate that will show up to vote in November. In the Ballotpedia Battleground polls, Trump trails Clinton and is currently winning less than a third of the votes of women in Florida, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Only in Virginia does he appear to clear the one-third mark (35 percent), but that still trails Clinton’s 48 percent support among women. Moreover, Trump badly lags behind Romney’s actual vote among women in these seven states (according to the 2012 exit polls) by an average of about 14 percentage points. Those deficits range from roughly 10 percentage points in Iowa and Virginia to 19 percentage points in Michigan.
Ballotpedia also tested hypothetical general election match-ups between Ohio Gov. John Kasich and House Speaker Paul Ryan as the Republican nominee against Clinton. Those results show that Kasich is currently leading Clinton in five of the swing states: Iowa, Michigan (barely), Ohio, Pennsylvania (barely), and Virginia. Ryan leads Clinton in only three of the states: Iowa, Ohio, and Virginia (barely). But it’s important to remember that Kasich has been largely absent from the partisan slugfest since he suspended his campaign for the GOP nomination back in May. He hasn’t been the target of attacks from Clinton and her Democratic allies the way Trump has, nor has he been the subject of scrutiny by the media. Ryan, given his position as one of the two GOP congressional leaders, has been more engaged in the presidential race, but again, he hasn’t been the focus of Democratic salvos.
And Republicans who are seeking to open up the party’s nomination in Cleveland shouldn’t get too carried away by the relatively stronger performances of Kasich and Ryan in these polls. In the 1968 GOP nominating contest, supporters of New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller pointed to polls showing that he would be a stronger general election candidate than former Vice President Richard Nixon. Likewise, in the run up to the 1984 Democratic convention and the Democratic presidential race between Colorado Sen. Gary Hart and former Vice President Walter Mondale, Hart supporters cited similar polls and argued that their candidate would have a better chance of beating the Republican incumbent, Ronald Reagan. In both cases these claims fell on deaf ears. Neither argument persuaded delegates not to nominate Nixon or Mondale, who entered their conventions with less commanding delegate leads than Trump has today.
And despite its late start, the Trump campaign is beginning to assemble a team of convention operatives to maintain that delegate lead. On top of that, the Republican National Committee operatives at the convention are opposed to that kind of open revolt on the floor. It’s been an unpredictable political year, so anything is possible. But it seems unlikely that a majority of GOP delegates are going to succeed in rising up and blocking Trump’s nomination in the face of an organized and disciplined convention apparatus just on the basis of general election trial-heat polls.
James A. Barnes is a senior writer at Ballotpedia who has covered every Democratic and Republican national convention since 1984. He will be in Cleveland and Philadelphia for Ballotpedia in July.
See also
- Ballotpedia's battleground poll, 2016
- Donald Trump presidential campaign, 2016
- Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, 2016
- John Kasich presidential campaign, 2016
- Presidential election, 2016/Polls
- Republican National Convention, 2016
- Democratic National Convention, 2016
