Philadelphia
Through Sunday, the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times “Daybreak” tracking poll of the race shows Trump gaining about 3 percentage points in the aftermath of the convention. That would be roughly in line with the convention bounces enjoyed by Democratic and Republican nominees in the last three election cycles.
As of Sunday, the poll, which is updated daily, showed Trump leading Clinton 45 percent to 41 percent. The lead is within the poll’s margin of error of 3 percentage points in either direction, meaning that the apparent lead could be the result of chance.
Trump led Clinton by a similar margin a week before the GOP convention started, after the sharp criticism she received from FBI Director James B. Comey over her handling of classified information in her emails when she was secretary of state. But Clinton’s support rose in the days immediately before the GOP convention, and the two were tied in the poll for much of the last week.
Though the Republican convention appears to have shifted some voters to Trump, it also seems to have deepened the intent to vote among Clinton’s backers.
In addition to asking respondents to rate from 0-100 the likelihood of their voting for Clinton, Trump or for someone else, the Daybreak poll also asks them to rate their likelihood of voting. Among Clinton backers, that likelihood has gone up over the last two weeks by an average of about 5 points — again, within the poll’s margin of error, but suggesting that recent events may be motivating her supporters.
The poll suggests that Trump has also started to seem like a plausible winner to more people. Two weeks ago, poll respondents, by 53 percent to 41 percent, said they expected Clinton to win the presidency. Now, that gap has narrowed significantly, to 50 percent to 44 percent — still a Clinton advantage, but a much tighter one.
The question of which candidate people think will win is sometimes — although not always — a better predictor of the election than asking people whom they plan to vote for. That’s particularly true when the election remains many weeks away.
Since the start of the GOP convention, Trump appears to have gained ground among young voters, with fewer saying they expect to vote for a third-party candidate. And what was a clear lead for Clinton among voters with a college degree has tightened so that her advantage with that group is now within the survey’s margin of error.
A similar increase for Trump has showed up in some other surveys. A poll by Morning Consult, a polling and media firm, showed him taking a 44 percent to 40 percent lead, the first time he has had the advantage in that poll.
Trump got a slightly larger increase in the latest CNN/ORC survey — a 6-point bump, which moved him from trailing Clinton in that poll to leading, 48 percent to 45 percent. When tested in a four-way matchup that included Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, and Jill Stein of the Green Party, Trump led 44 percent to 39 percent, with Johnson getting 9 percent and Stein 3 percent, the CNN/ORC poll found.
Recent polling also indicates that New Hampshire is again likely to be a battleground state. A WMUR Granite State Poll conducted by the UNH Survey Center before last week’s Republican National Convention showed Trump and Clinton statistically tied in the state.
The poll found 39 percent of likely New Hampshire voters said they would vote for Clinton — 37 percent for Trump — and that support for Clinton had dropped 11 percentage points since April.
The question for this week will be whether Clinton can generate an increase of her own out of the Democratic convention. At a briefing for reporters on Monday morning, her pollster, Joel Benenson, said he believed Republicans had left a significant opening for her to do so.
Republicans “solidified their base” at their convention, he said. “What they didn’t do was reach out to voters who weren’t already in their base.”
“Hillary has a commanding advantage” on the question of which candidate “is going to fight for me,” he said. “What we really want to do is to drive that on the positive side.”
Democratic pollster Geoff Garin, who also spoke at the briefing sponsored by The Atlantic magazine, acknowledged that some voters are attracted to Trump because he promises change, even if they are not sure what his change would mean.
Clinton “needs to convince them that she is on their side, and that she will make their lives better as president,” he said.
Republicans set out “very clearly and forcefully” that they want the election to primarily be about which candidate voters believe will keep the country safe, he added. “What we need out of this convention,” he said, “is a clear definition of what the election is about … what kind of country they want to lead us toward.”
Valley News staff writer John P. Gregg contributed to this report.