Talk Elections

Donald Trump may be winning converts from an unlikely source — Democrats — a new unpublished poll shows.

The poll has Kirk edging ahead of Democratic nominee Tammy Duckworth 41.9 percent to 40.4 percent, within the poll's plus or minus 3.5 percentage point margin of error, but better than the narrow 42.5 percent to 42 percent lead Duckworth held when Basswood last surveyed in April.

Kirk this summer ran TV ads before Duckworth, which could account for a margin shift that small. He's also loudly backed off an earlier endorsement of Trump.

Normally I'd say an incumbent with only 41.9 percent backing is in some trouble. But this is a strange year, and it's hard to say without knowing more about the roughly one in five voters who are undecided.

In comparison to the Senate contest, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has a wide lead in her home state over the GOP's Trump.

Specifically, 46.4 percent of likely voters surveyed by phone said they favor Clinton, 32.5 percent are for Trump, 5.2 percent for Libertarian Gary Johnson and 2.6 percent for the Green Party's Jill Stein. Just over 13 percent were undecided.

Back on the Senate race, Basswood says Kirk is doing 22 points better than Trump among moderates, and 24 points better among women. Basswood's research memo didn't say what the relative margin is among Republicans and men, but it obviously is much smaller.

Basswood also found that Illinois voters oppose the Iran nuclear deal 51 percent to 28 percent, favor keeping the Guantanamo prison open 57 percent to 34 percent, and oppose admitting Syrian refugees to the U.S. 60 percent to 32 percent. There have been some sharp differences between Duckworth and Kirk on those issues, particularly the latter.   

we didn't include Johnson in the poll so we don't have numbers on him. The racial composition of the sample was 30% African American, 3% Latino, 2% Asian. The rest were white or other.

While Trump was faring well in some conservative states like Missouri and Indiana, according to the RGA’s figures, he’s losing two states where Republicans are hoping to elect governors, North Carolina and Vermont.

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‏@MegKinnardAP
More: Feldman Group poll commissioned by @SCDP has Clinton/Trump tied at 39% w/third-parties included. Take them out & Trump leads 45%-43%.

Mitt Romney lost Franklin County by 125,000 votes. Mr. Trump is supported by only about 20 percent of the voters there, according to a Republican strategist briefed on private polling.

Mr. Trump has already slipped perceptibly in public polls, trailing widely this week in Pennsylvania and by smaller margins in Florida and North Carolina — three states he cannot afford to lose. But private polling by both parties shows an even more precipitous drop

Compounding their difficulties, Republicans are also fending off a challenge to Senator Richard M. Burr in North Carolina, a state Mrs. Clinton is determined to win, and have also become just as worried about Senator Roy Blunt’s prospects in Missouri. Strategists in both parties who have seen internal polling say Mr. Blunt, whose seat initially seemed safe, is now trailing his Democratic challenger, Jason Kander, a deft campaigner who has been helped by Mrs. Clinton’s narrowing deficit in the state.

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Sept. 14-18, 2016, with a random sample of 1,033 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, including 931 registered voters. For results based on the total sample of registered voters, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. For results based on the 444 registered voters who support either Hillary Clinton or the 407 registered voters who support Donald Trump, the margin of sampling error is ±6 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.

Lisa Murkowski’s campaign just blasted out an internal poll that shows her way ahead but has Trump up only three on Clinton in Alaska

The campaign was planning to survey an array of Republican-leaning states this week, including Arizona, Georgia, Missouri and Indiana, to determine how competitive Mrs. Clinton is with Mr. Trump, according to a senior Clinton adviser who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Sending Mrs. Clinton to those states may be of little assistance to the party’s candidates, but an infusion of money dedicated to voter turnout could ensure that she enters the White House with a solid Senate majority and help Democrats make substantial gains in the House.

Democratic strategists involved in House and Senate races said they envisioned Mr. Trump’s collapse precipitating a broad shift in the political landscape, with tossup races moving firmly into their hands, and campaigns that were once long shots suddenly becoming competitive. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee planned to do rapid polling early this week to measure the impact of Mr. Trump on the House battlefield.

Dem poll taken mostly before video had Hillary up 10 in Kansas-3, pro-Romney KC burbs. Yoder now at risk.

The theory the internal pollsters are running with is that people who choose "other candidate" will actually vote third party on the day - while if you list Johnson or McMullin, they will tend to get more support than they will actually get on the day.

For instance, the super pac consistently bought broadcast-television advertising in the biggest, most expensive markets at the highest possible rates. It FedExed tabletlike mailers to New Hampshire voters that played a documentary about Bush’s life, and put just 1.4 percent of its budget toward digital ads, an abnormally tiny amount for a top super pac, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

A source close to the Clinton campaign...believes it is comfortably ahead — Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Nevada

KSTP/SurveyUSA: Erik Paulsen (R) leads Terri Bonoff (D) 49%-38% with 13% undecided in 3rd District congressional race.

Sr GOP source: 7 SEN races w/in margin of error, per internals, w widespread Trump collapse. Several GOPers running 10-15 pts ahead of DT.

Sr GOP source: 7 SEN races w/in margin of error, per internals, w widespread Trump collapse. Several GOPers running 10-15 pts ahead of DT.

Of the seven races, GOP candidate holds leads betw 1-3 pts in six races... Heck down a couple in NV.

f the sev­en most com­pet­it­ive Sen­ate races, Re­pub­lic­ans are cling­ing to leads in six (Pennsylvania, Mis­souri, New Hamp­shire, Flor­ida, In­di­ana, and North Car­o­lina), and barely trail­ing in a sev­enth (Nevada).

In a recent poll conducted by The Terrance Group and Lake Research Partners, we have reached 20% in key Central Plains states. Notably, we are also polling at 17% in Clinton's "home" state of New York and 12% in mountain states.

Randy Evans, a Republican National committeeman from Georgia, said he’s skeptical that the debate was truly a flashpoint in the race for Clinton. He said early vote numbers indicate a higher proportion of votes from rural areas than four years ago, with lighter numbers in urban areas, suggesting a potential tilt toward Trump.

“I’m not gonna pretend, with this electorate, to have the crystal ball,” he said, citing internal polls he’s seen giving Trump a 4- to 6-point edge.