Press. voanews.com.
presidential elections are only nominally national contests and are not
decided by the popular vote. The outcome is decided in the 50 individual states
as the candidates look to win the Electoral College, with each state's impact
on the outcome dependent on its population and representation in Congress.
Both Democrat Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state, and
Republican Donald Trump, a real estate tycoon seeking his first elected office,
are trying to get to a majority 270 of the 538 electors to claim a four-year
term in the White House.
Now, new polling released Thursday shows her surging to leads over Trump
in four key battleground states, even as she pulls further ahead in national
voter surveys. Other projections show her with a wide edge over the one-time
television reality show host in Electoral College projections, but often not
yet reaching the 270 majority figure as they fight to win swing states where
Democratic and Republican support is almost evenly divided in U.S. presidential
elections.
One political analyst, Amy Walter, said this week, "She has more
options to get to 270 than he does. She is clearly the favorite. But, this race
is not over."
The latest battleground polling shows Clinton opening a
9-percentage-point edge in the midwestern state of Michigan, a 15-point
advantage in the northeastern state of New Hampshire, an 11-point lead in the
eastern state of Pennsylvania and a 6-point margin in the southeastern state of
Florida. All are states where Trump has campaigned and is looking to reverse
Democratic voting trends in recent elections to gain an edge in the November
election to replace President Barack Obama when he leaves office in January.
National polls also show Clinton, seeking to become the country's first female
president, surging to bigger, but not insurmountable leads over Trump. In an
average of polls, Clinton is ahead of Trump by about six points, 47.4 percent
to 41.5, although the most recent poll by Fox News pegged her lead at 49-39 in
the days after she and a raft of speakers denounced Trump at last week's
Democratic National Convention.
Fallout over Trump comments
The recent polling has been conducted as Republicans have voiced sharp
dismay over a series of Trump comments in the last week. In a succession of
interviews and comments on Twitter, Trump seemed ignorant of the ramifications
of 2014 Russian takeover of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, repeatedly belittled
the parents of a Muslim-American soldier killed in fighting in Iraq in 2004
after they attacked him at the convention and in subsequent television
interviews and refused to endorse the country's top elected Republican
official, House Speaker Paul Ryan, in his party primary next week.
“It almost feels like we’re at a tipping point,” Alan Abramowitz, a
long-time presidential election analyst at Emory University in Atlanta, told
VOA. “It’s really pretty incredible.” He said Trump “seems to believe he’s
still running a primary campaign” trying to win the Republican nomination,
rather than taking on Clinton three months ahead of the November 8 national
election.
“This is pretty clear, this is hurting him,” Abramowitz said of Trump.
“We have to wonder whether we’ll see more erosion,” Abramowitz said.
“There’s never been a candidate like [Trump], with his lack of self-control.” He
said that with polls showing American voters view both candidates unfavorably,
him more than her, the contest has become “more about his fitness and
suitability” to become the U.S. commander in chief. “The Democrats are trying
to turn this into a referendum on Trump and he’s trying to help them,”
Abramowitz said.
‘Absence of any discipline’
Another political scientist, James Gimpel at the University of Maryland
outside Washington, said “The electoral map was always challenging for the
Republicans. But with his seemingly almost random comments, we’re really in
uncharted waters.” “There’s an absence of any discipline” on Trump’s part,
Gimpel said.
“He is not a mistake-free candidate,” Gimpel said, while cautioning that
neither is Clinton. “She might end up stumbling, too.” Trump contemplated the
state of the race at a campaign rally in Florida on Wednesday.
"Wouldn't that be embarrassing to lose to crooked Hillary Clinton?
That would be terrible," he said. Later, in an interview with a local
television station, he was asked whether he has been "baited into
battles" over his sometimes brash views.
"I think that's probably right," he said. "We're going to
focus more on Hillary Clinton." Walter, an analyst with the Cook Political
Report, concluded that "Trump is running a disorganized, unconventional
and seat-of-the-pants campaign that is driven as much by what he sees [and]
hears on cable TV as anything else. This approach won him the primary but it
really limits his pathways to 270 Electoral College votes."
But Walter said, "Clinton is running an organized and disciplined
campaign that lacks the sort of organic excitement or enthusiasm of a 'normal'
campaign. It comes across as stilted and poll-driven… to within an inch of its
life."
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