Just last month, Hillary Clinton had around a 10 point lead over Donald Trump in general election polls and she looked to be in a dominant position.
However, Clinton’s lead now looks to be down to just a few points, and now, some polls are even showing Trump with the lead. Has Trump turned the tide or is this just a blip on the radar?
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2016 US Presidential Election Betting Odds
Hillary Clinton -227
Donald Trump +206
Bernie Sanders +2755
FOR THE REPUBLICANS
Donald Trump has continued to do things his own way after receiving the support of the bulk of Republican Party leaders. On one hand, it’s hard to blame him after they continually tried to undermine him in the primaries. Trump overcame this and continued to attract voters with his larger than life personality and there’s a pretty good argument that he understands how to pander to people better than the Republican Party does.
On the other hand, Trump has never run for office before, whereas Republican Party veterans know the importance of certain things. Trump’s barebones staff hurt him when it came to selecting state delegates for the Republican National Convention and he was continually outmaneuvered by the more behind the scenes savvy Ted Cruz.
Now, Trump is refusing to adopt what has become the commonplace practice of using droves of data to target and try to bring out likely voters. Instead, Trump insists that he will be able to win over voters by barnstorming the country and attracting people to his unorthodox personality. Even though this plan worked in the Republican primary, the general election is a whole different animal.
Many more people will show up to vote in the general election than the number who voted in the primaries and Trump’s reticence to modern strategies could come back to bite him.
FOR THE DEMOCRATS
It’s pretty indicative of how crazy this campaign cycle has been when it’s the Democrats and not the Republicans that are worried about party unity now. Many establishment Republicans have fallen in line behind Trump, but a good chunk of Bernie Sanders’ supporters are remaining adamant that the only candidate they will back in this election is Bernie.
Although there are reports that Sanders has reached out to party officials and explained that he will gracefully bow out and support Hillary Clinton after the primary season, his rhetoric lately has been surprisingly strong. Sanders has challenged the Democratic National Committee chair with continued accusations that the nomination system for the Democratic Party is inherently unjust. The system does have a great deal of flaws, but Sanders has benefited from it as well.
Caucuses have disproportionately favored Sanders as his supporters are far more involved and are typically more able to spend a few hours of time caucusing than Clinton’s supporters. This is also an issue because caucuses tend to have just a fraction of the turnout as primaries do, so Sanders’ supporters are able to have a greater say so than they would otherwise.
Whenever the primaries are finally over, it’s very important that Sanders gives Clinton a strong vote of support or else many of his voters may just stay home for the general election. According to a recent YouGov poll, 61 percent of self-identified Sanders’ voters had an unfavorable view of Clinton and just 55 percent said they would vote for Clinton over Trump in November.
Sanders’ voters make up a substantial amount of the electorate and Clinton needs to grab as many of these as she can. Sanders recent attacks on Clinton have led to a spike in her unpopularity among his supporters and likely played a role in the ground that Trump gained on Clinton.
Generally speaking, there is usually a point in the election cycle where the difference in polling is just a few points and there are many reasons to suspect Clinton will widen the gap between her and Trump soon. As Bernie voters who identify as independent, but are really more left-leaning than Hillary supporters, return to the fold; the odds that they will follow through on their threats to back Trump over Clinton will wane and Clinton will receive a boost in support.
Although it looks doubtful on the surface, it’s still very likely that Clinton achieves a big victory in November.
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