The first Ohio poll since Donald Trump dispatched his Republican rivals following the Indiana primary last week shows the billionaire beating fellow New Yorker Hillary Clinton in a head-to-head matchup.
The poll, released Tuesday by Quinnipiac University, asked more than 1,000 voters in each of the swing states of Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania whether they would support Trump or Clinton. Clinton edged out Trump in Florida and Pennsylvania, 43 percent to 42 percent. But in Ohio, Trump took the lead, 43-39.
In all three states, democratic socialist Bernie Sanders beat Trump by wider margins.
Six major polls so far this year have asked Ohioans how they would vote if the election were held today. Only two polls — each conducted by Quinnipiac University, first in February and the latest from April 27 to May 8 — put Trump ahead in a hypothetical matchup.
The polls are snapshots in time and less accurate than those that will be conducted in the weeks before the general election in November. But they indicate a watershed moment as Clinton consistently has trounced the brash businessman in polling matchups.
“Six months from Election Day, the presidential races between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the three most crucial states, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, are too close to call,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac Poll. “At this juncture, Trump is doing better in Pennsylvania than the GOP nominees in 2008 and 2012. And the two candidates are about where their party predecessors were at this point in Ohio and Florida.”
Real Clear Politics, which has averaged all similar polls since early March, still has Clinton ahead of Trump by 3 points. Clinton has an insurmountable lead over Sanders in pledged delegates won in state contests.
What the polls over time show is that Clinton’s lead over Trump has diminished, even in those where she is still ahead.
In March, she led Trump by 5 to 7 points in three separate polls. Before trailing Trump in www.qu.edu/images/polling/ps/ps05102016_Sw4b42d.pdf">the most recent Quinnipiac poll, Clinton’s lead had shrunk to 3 points, according to Public Policy Polling (PPP), a left-leaning polling agency.
Trump’s surge signals a potential unification of Republicans, even as party bosses bicker over whether his conservatism is genuine.
“PPP’s new national poll finds that Republicans have quickly unified around Donald Trump, making the presidential race more competitive than it has previously been perceived to be,” the polling agency said Tuesday.
The left-leaning national poll also asked Americans if they had a higher opinion of Trump or hemorrhoids, cockroaches, the rock band Nickelback and other apparently irksome things. Trump was found to be more favorable to hemorrhoids and pests, but less so than all else on the long list.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @ABJDoug.
