Fox poll: Trump leads in Ohio, Nevada, North Carolina

All three of these states went for George W. Bush twice. All three went for Barack Obama twice. Conventional wisdom is that all three have in 12 years gone from red states to exceedingly difficult challenges for any Republican because of demographics. But what if that's not true? What if Obama was a uniquely gifted politician running against lackluster opponents, and a different set of choices might produce a very different result? A new Fox News poll certainly seems to suggest that could be the case:

Donald Trump narrowly leads Hillary Clinton in the battleground states of Nevada, North Carolina, and Ohio.

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That’s according to Fox News statewide likely voter polls conducted Sunday through Tuesday evenings. Trump is helped by strong support from working-class white voters, while Clinton is hurt by a lackluster performance among younger voters and women.

Not that Hillary isn't leading among younger voters and women. She is. But she's not killing it, and she needs to be killing it to offset Trump's strength among other voter groups. The poll has Trump up 43-40 in Nevada, 45-40 in North Carolina and 42-37 in Ohio. We've seen in recent days that Hillary's campaign is going all out, bringing in celebrities and sending out the likes of Obama, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to appeal to young voters and women and try to somehow bring them back into the fold. They voted for Obama, after all! Why wouldn't they vote for Hillary?

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Of course, as awful a president as Obama has been, we know that many people simply vote for the candidate they like or find cool. Obama will win that contest all day long, even as he destroys the health care system and surrenders to ISIS. Hillary will never win that contest, and that's going to produce a margin among key Democrat demographic groups that simply doesn't get the job done in battleground states like these. In North Carolina, in particular, I wonder if part of the problem for Democrats this year is a degree of voter backlash over the way the left has treated the state - not only the recriminations over the law against transgender bathroom use but now the Charlotte riots that were driven entirely by the false media narrative about racist white cops. Both of these dynamics were the product of the ascendant cultural left, and I wouldn't be surprised if the state that voted twice for Obama is wondering if this is the thanks it gets. As always, these polls are still early in the campaign season, and they're close, and Fox polls do tend to tilt a little more Republican than others. You have to keep all that in mind as you assess how much stock to put in them. But they're yet the latest indication that this is becoming a very difficult race for Hillary, and that some of the states she probably assumed were hers are going to be very tough fights - if she can take them at all,

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