Rasmussen Reports tends to come up with poll results that are overly favorable to Republicans, so you have to consider when you see the news that a new Rasmussen poll actually has Trump leading Hillary 41-39 in a hypothetical general election matchup that might be a lot less hypothetical by this time tomorrow.
Any one poll can be an outlier, and for lack of any trend in this direction we'd have to say there's a pretty strong chance that's the case here. Also, Trump's "lead" is somewhat conditional:
Last week, Rasmussen Reports gave voters the option of staying home on Election Day if Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the big party nominees, and six percent (6%) said that’s what they intend to do for now. Clinton and Trump were tied with 38% support each; 16% said they would vote for some other candidate, and two percent (2%) were undecided.
But Trump edges slightly ahead if the stay-at-home option is removed. Trump also now does twice as well among Democrats as Clinton does among Republicans.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. Voters finds Trump with 41% support to Clinton’s 39%. Fifteen percent (15%) prefer some other candidate, and five percent (5%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
So they're tied if people have the option of staying home, which of course they do in real life, but if they're forced to choose, 41 percent choose Trump compared with 39 percent who choose Hillary. I guess it's something to build on if you're for Trump.
Even so, I find all the doom and gloom about Trump's chances against Hillary (or Ted Cruz's for that matter) somewhat hilarious in that it all ignores one of Hillary's biggest weaknesses: Herself.
This is good time for Hillary's campaign because all the media focus is on the Trump/Cruz/Kasich food fight on the Republican side. Hillary's still got a challenger all right (and he's not going away), but to the extent there's any drama left to that race, it's not generating much news coverage. What that means for Hillary is that she fades from the spotlight - for now. And whenever she does that, her poll numbers improve because people are not getting the daily reminders of what she's really like. We haven't been hearing a lot about the FBI investigation in recent weeks, and more importantly, you're not seeing Hillary speeches and interviews that remind everyone of how shrill, dishonest, entitled and insecure she is.
When the conventions are over and the whole story becomes Trump or Cruz (or someone else I guess) vs. Hillary, then everything she does and says starts to become front-page news again. At that point, it's very plausible that Hillary's numbers plummet because people will realize a Hillary victory means four years of this:
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People talk about this race as if it's going to be a gigantic mismatch between a horrendous candidate in Trump and some political genius in Hillary. Um . . . no. Hillary is a terrible candidate with some of the highest negatives of any candidate in this nation's history, and for good reason. She's every bit as bad as her worst critics say she is.
That doesn't guarantee she'll lose. But she has major weaknesses that no one is exploiting right now because everyone is caught up in the heat of the primary battle, so it's easy for Hillary to sustain decent-looking poll numbers under the present circumstances. We've got a long way to go in this race, and I think smart Democrats know - although they'll never admit publicly - that their nominee is exceedingly capable of losing because she really is that bad.
Rasmussen Reports tends to come up with poll results that are overly favorable to Republicans, so you have to consider when you see the news that a new Rasmussen poll actually has Trump leading Hillary 41-39 in a hypothetical general election matchup that might be a lot less hypothetical by this time tomorrow.
Any one poll can be an outlier, and for lack of any trend in this direction we'd have to say there's a pretty strong chance that's the case here. Also, Trump's "lead" is somewhat conditional:
