One-Third Of Republicans, 64% Of Voters Feel Trump Is Unqualified To Be President
If there was this belief that the Orlando shooting would eventually turn into an advantage for Donald Trump with voters, that was complete set to rest on Sunday with the release of the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll.
Among registered voters, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton holds a 12-point lead over the cotton-haired former reality TV star, 51% to 39%. This is a huge reversal from the previous month’s survey, which showed Trump up by two points shortly after he had secured the GOP nomination.
Drilling down into the latest poll’s results, we see that Trump’s support among white voters is slipping, while Clinton continues to demolish him among women, minorities and young voters. The orange-hued real estate mogul only manages 15% of support among non-white voters, 62(!) points behind Hillary. Clinton holds a 23-point advantage with women, 57% to 34% while The Donald is merely tied with men, 45% to 45%. That is simply untenable if you want to win in November. As far as young voters go, despite the notion that millennial Berners will hold out for Bernie Sanders or even go Trump as a protest vote, Clinton is winning the 18-39 age group 54% to 34%.
Of course, most polls have shown similar things, with Trump’s support largely coming from white, high-school educated, conservative males. However, looking at how Republican voters view him, there appears to be a growing contingent joining the #NeverTrump camp. Only 77$ of GOP voters say they’ll vote for Trump, with 10% picking Hillary, 9% saying another candidate or not Trump/Clinton and one percent saying they just won’t vote.
Even worse for the ex-Wrestlemania participant, 33% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents state that Trump is unqualified to be President. This helps push the total among all voters to reach 64%. The opposite is true for Hillary. 61% of adults feel she is qualified to be in the White House with 59% of independents feeling that is the case and even 23% of Republicans grudgingly admitting she deserves to be POTUS.
Another thing to glean from the results is that there are still 18% of voters who say they are considering a third-party candidate. However, only 3% said they were leaning towards Jill Stein or Gary Johnson. 12% say they are thinking of someone else. It seems obvious that a good chunk of those are Bernie or Busters, holding out hope that Sanders will still run as an independent. This spells even worse news for Trump as once Bernie finally endorses Clinton (he will do so eventually, even if he holds out until the convention), most of those voters will shift to Hillary.
Finally, in a big FU to the GOP and Trump’s campaign, President Obama saw his popularity soar, as he now enjoys a 56% job approval rating, his highest since the killing of Osama bin Laden. Not only is this good news for Clinton’s campaign, but it should be helpful to down-ballot Democrats, who can embrace POTUS and have him hit the trail for them as well.
With the release of this poll, and a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll revealing Clinton up by five points, HuffPost Pollster now has Hillary up seven points in an average of recent survey, with RealClearPolitics showing roughly the same margin.
