New National Poll: Trump Increasing Lead Over Clinton. Billionaire has five-point lead over Clinton

[imagine2015]

New National Poll: Trump Increasing Lead Over Clinton
New York billionaire has five-point lead over Clinton
by Andrea Germanos, staff writer
May 19, 2016

A new Rasmussen poll released Thursday shows Republican front-runner Donald Trump increasing his lead over Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The New York billionaire has a five-point edge over the Clinton, with 42 percent of likely voters saying they'd back him compared to 37 percent for Clinton.

The poll also shows Trump now getting 76 percent of the Republican vote; Clinton nabbed 72 percent of the Democratic vote. Thirteen percent of Democrats would prefer Trump in square-off between the two, while nine percent of Republican voters would favor Clinton in such a match-up.

A Rasmussen poll released at the beginning of the month, for comparison, showed the two candidates running neck-and-neck, with the real estate mogul with 41 percent to the former secretary of state's 39 percent, within that poll's margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The new Rasmussen poll, the New York Daily News reports, "suggests Trump could be experiencing a popularity surge as he pivots away from many of the controversial and bigoted statements he made during the GOP primary and embraces more establishment positions as he prepares for the general election."

Clinton challenger Bernie Sanders, for his part, has continued to point to polling showing that he's the Democratic candidate able to trounce Trump—and that ability was only further bolstered by the Fox News poll which showed that in a hypothetical general election match-up between the Vermont senator and Trump, Sanders leads 46 to 42 percent.

"If you look at virtually every poll in the last six weeks we do better and often much better against Trump than Secretary Clinton," Sanders said Friday in North Dakota. "So if the goal is to defeat Donald Trump, we are the campaign to do that."

?

Are the results of a new poll a sign of a "popularity surge" for Trump?


http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/19/new-national-poll-trump-increasing-lead-over-clinton

[tonyt53]

1. It is mid-May. Polls do not matter until Labor Day

Only political novices think they matter now.

[NWCorona]

4. Where were you when team Hillary was touting the polls

That had Hillary beating trump? Especially swing states.

[apnu]

7. Yeah that was dumb, so what?

Sanders and his supporters tout polls all day every day saying they're beating Trump.

Bernie is the pot, Hillary is the kettle.

[NWCorona]

12. So what?

First I think Bernie supporters have been pretty consistent with their acceptance of the polls. It was only team Hillary that dismissed them when Bernie was ahead nationally. Then only to embrace them when Hillary gained and polled higher nationally and especially in the swing states. Now it's back to being dismissive.

National polls do mean something at this point in the game. It's not like Oct 2015 when barely anyone was paying attention to the race.

[apnu]

16. Bernie's campaing puffs up polls that are positive to him just like everybody else.

That's my point.

[imagine2015]

11. Polls do not matter unless they show Secretary Clinton in the lead!

[LenaBaby61]

15. Actually the new Fox Poll from May 14th --May 17th ...

Shows Bernie Sanders once healthy lead vs Trump in a GE match-up is now down to +4 points (It had been a 14 point lead).

So, if you believe that Hillary Clinton is losing steam vs Trump nationally then Bernie Sanders losing his 14 point lead vs Trump has to mean that Bernie Sanders is losing steam vs Trump as well.

[msongs]

2. sanders campaign and rasmussen joining forces. nice nt

[grossproffit]

8. Like Trump and the National Enquirer.

[JoePhilly]

3. More CommonFantasies nonsense.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. Well, if worst comes to worst, and both are nominated, the debates should be entertaining.

As they both strive to be more "Centrist" than the other.

[StayFrosty]

6. There you go again

Sandroids love to tell us Trump will win

[tokenlib]

9. Well he did offer to build a new ballroom at the White House...

Maybe Hillary just needs to make a better offer.

[MisterP]

10. Trump isn't surging like this against Sanders

Trump-Clinton is going to be a race between two parties--one that's unleashed the national id but also making some extremely populist noises and who remade a party entirely by kicking down every designated heir and perfumed princeling and any overclever RNC bureaucrat who got in his way, against an establishment fixture who's been sheltered for two decades, who won a primary by locking out unaffiliated voters, and who's running on a residual party from a platform comprised of things passed 50 or 80 years ago (and which her record says she'll destroy to pay back her donors); she's the second-most disliked candidate in US history, after only her opponent

Trump-Sanders is going to be a race between who can best represent the 70-90% of Americans who want XYZ in a system set up on profiting hugely from making sure XYZ never happens (or at least not without going up in price for the poors): here there's an experienced Senator with high likability vs. one of the worst human beings to walk the earth without directly ordering murders

these are two different elections we get to choose between, before we get to choose between two candidates

this is why paradigm is so important

[procon]

13. Bernie cheerleaders, you're needed on stage!

Everyday, Sanders troops boast that basically none of his supporters will ever vote for Hillary. Even if she tries to woo them, they are more interested in damaging her candidacy and weakening the Democratic Party. I hear them say they just want to set back everything that Democrats like Hillary have worked their asses off for the past 30 years.

Sanders is a spoiler, he can't win , so he's going to throw the election to Donald Trump. Sanders followers tal a good game about his so called “revolution,” he has done little of significance in his long career in Washington to demonstrate he's capable of being anything more than a backbencher from a tiny state.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are watching Hillary fighting on two separate fronts, trying to keep Donald Trump from becoming the "decider" on civil rights, foreign policy, and Wall Street, and a crucial state supreme court choice, while Sanders attacks her in the primaries.

[johnson_z]

14. I think 5 points, in the middle of May, doesn't mean much.

So much will change between now and November, that this is just not a big deal.

[imagine2015]

18. "So much will change between now and November" Right. She could lose by 20 points.

[Jitter65]

17. Believe me, come November that will change in Hillary's favor. nt

[reformist2]

19. Nah, I'm not going to believe that.