Latest 2016 Presidential Polls: Donald Trump’s Final Surge Gives Him Real Chance To Win, But Early Voting Gives Hillary Clinton Major Boost
The latest 2016 presidential polls show Donald Trump continuing in a final week surge that changed what looked like a sure blowout to a now wide-open race, but Hillary Clinton’s advantage in early voting results could end up saving her.
Had Election Day 2016 been one month earlier, it was almost assured that Clinton would win in a landslide. At the time, Donald Trump was hounded by the release of the Access Hollywood video that showed him appear to brag about sexually assaulting women, leading to Trump’s denial of any wrongdoing at the second debate and then a string of women coming forward to accuse him of assaulting them.
The string of events sent Trump tumbling in the polls, allowing Hillary Clinton to open up a lead that approached double digits.
But if October was a difficult month for Donald Trump, then November was his comeback. Voters turned off by his scandals have started to trickle back into Trump’s camp, and the latest 2016 presidential polls show that the Republican candidate is now just a hair behind Hillary Clinton.
An aggregation of all the latest polls put together by RealClearPolitics showed that Clinton now holds a lead of close to one point. And competing poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight gives Donald Trump a roughly 35 percent chance of winning — a 2016 election prediction that, while small, still represents his best standing in the race since the end of September.
Three days before the big day, our daily tracking poll is showing Donald Trump in the lead https://t.co/ha2ggUGFLq pic.twitter.com/3sGzF1yrJA
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) November 5, 2016
In fact, FiveThirtyEight’s state-by-state analysis shows that there could either be a razor-thin finish or a comfortable lead for Hillary Clinton. The analysis shows Clinton and Trump separated by just tenths of a point in three critical swing states — Florida, North Carolina, and Nevada.
Meanwhile, Trump has pulled into clear but small leads in Ohio and Iowa, states that Barack Obama won in both 2008 and 2012.
Even if Trump were to win all of the toss-up states along with the states where he is currently leading, it would still put him short of the 270 electoral votes needed to win. That means he would have to flip a state currently in Hillary Clinton’s corner, and the 2016 early voting results show that may be difficult.
Democrats have held a major edge in early voting across a number of states that Hillary Clinton needs to win, chiefly Nevada. As CNN noted, turnout for Democrats far outpaces the 2012 numbers, when Barack Obama won the state by seven points.
“Clark County — home of Las Vegas and more than two-thirds of Nevada’s active registered voters — saw its record for single-day early vote turnout shattered Friday when 57,174 people cast their ballots, according to data from the Nevada secretary of state’s office that’s based on the party registration of those who have voted.
“Overall, Democrats have built a lead of more than 72,000 votes there — 13.7 points ahead of Republicans, and slightly larger than Obama’s 2012 edge.”
There is still a chance of another major shift before Election Day. The final 2016 presidential polls will be coming out in the next two days, and could reflect a change after two new scandals for Donald Trump. Late on Friday evening, two separate reports came out hitting Trump, one about an alleged affair he held with Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal while he was married to wife Melania, and another that Melania lived and worked illegally when she first immigrated to the United States.
It is not clear if the scandal will have an effect on the race, as the latest 2016 presidential polls don’t yet account for any of the events of Friday. But if the results continue on the path that they’ve taken in the past week, then Election Night looks to be a tight contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
[Featured Image by Gerardo Mora/Getty Images]
