WhatFinger


Results from after Sunday's debate, but before the latest New York Times hit piece

Rasmussen shows Trump back in front 43-41



Some major warnings here: First, it's Rasmussen, which always shows results more friendly to Republicans than other polls. Second, while it's the first major poll to reflect voter reactions to Sunday night's Trump debate win, it also was taken before the latest accusations of Trump groping women in yesterday's New York Times. But what it does show is that the Sunday night debate seems to have had more of an impact, at least with some voters, than the 11-year-old tape or the weekend's worth of stories about Republican defections. Rasmussen offers the details:
The latest Rasmussen Reports White House Watch national telephone and online survey shows Trump with 43% support among Likely U.S. Voters to Clinton’s 41%. Yesterday, Clinton still held a four-point 43% to 39% lead over Trump, but that was down from five points on Tuesday and her biggest lead ever of seven points on Monday.
Rasmussen Reports updates its White House Watch survey daily Monday through Friday at 8:30 am Eastern based on a three-day rolling average of 1,500 Likely U.S. Voters. Monday’s survey was the first following the release of an 11-year-old video showing Trump discussing women in graphic sexual detail but did not include any polling results taken after the debate. All three nights of the latest survey follow Sunday’s debate. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson has dropped slightly to six percent (6%) support, while Green Party candidate Jill Stein holds steady at two percent (2%). Four percent (4%) still like some other candidate in the race, and another four percent (4%) remain undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.) Eighty-four percent (84%) now say they are certain how they will vote in this year’s presidential election, and among these voters, Trump posts a 49% to 46% lead over Clinton. Among voters who say they still could change their minds between now and Election Day, it’s Clinton 40%, Trump 37%, Johnson 19% and Stein four percent (4%).

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That last bolded passage is particularly interesting to me. If the locked-in voters are more pro-Trump, and the people who lean toward Hillary are still persuadable, that suggests a fluidity in the electorate that we've rarely seen. Now again, I think you have to be very careful with Rasmussen polls because they typically are less reflective of the final results than the less Republican-friendly polls. Yeah, I know. Would that it were not so. But it is. But let's say for a moment that this is reasonably accurate. If 84 percent are already locked in, and they're 49-46 for Trump, then Hillary's not going to win by holding a 40-37 edge among the 16 percent who are still undecided. Also, if you're still undecided at this point, what does that mean? You've surely heard all the lewd dirt about Trump. If, knowing all that, you still can't quite bring yourself to get behind Hillary, surely you've noticed what a completely corrupt sleaze she is. Or maybe you just recognize that for all Trump's faults, Hillary's agenda for the nation is simply not something that can be permitted to advance. If I'm Trump, what this tells me is that the people who are now telling pollsters they're leaning toward Hillary are still very persuadable. The more they hear about her corruption, her double-dealing and her lies, the more likely they might be to realize that Trump is the far less objectionable of the two choices. I'm not going to start getting excited because of a Rasmussen poll, and neither should you. When I start to see this result from Gallup, Marist, PPP and other pollsters, then I'm going to believe Trump is really turning this around. And when we factor in the impact of these women's accusations, then we'll see if it's going to be remotely possible for Trump to weather the media's war against him. But I think one thing is very clear: The American electorate does not want to vote for Hillary. They just need a passable alternative. And the media are doing everything they possibly can to convince the public that no such alternative exists.


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Dan Calabrese -- Bio and Archives

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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