The latest round of polls show Donald Trump slightly ahead of Hillary Clinton in Nevada and North Carolina, while he’s built a commanding 11-point lead in the 2nd Congressional District of Maine.
The Maine CD2 number comes from a survey by Maine People’s Resource Center, which also found a statistical tie statewide between Trump and Clinton in a four-way race that also includes Libertarian Gary Johnson and Jill Stein of the Green Party. Without Johnson and Stein, Clinton leads Trump statewide in Maine by 45% to 39.9%, just outside the margin of error.
Maine, however, allocates only two of its Electoral College votes to the statewide winner, and then one to the winner of each of its two congressional districts. CD2 covers the bulk of the state’s land area and is characterized as more rural, conservative, white, and older.
Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight attributes Trump’s strength in CD2 to “how well the Manhattan businessman’s message plays in rural America and depleted centers of manufacturing,” noting that he does extremely well with area residents who say they are “struggling to maintain their standard of living,” and “worrying for their children’s future.”
“Mitt Romney lost by six percentage points more in the 2nd than he did nationally; Trump is doing six points better against Hillary Clinton there than he is overall,” Silver observed on Monday.
The latest poll from MPRC has Trump a whopping 11 points ahead of Clinton in Maine’s CD2 in the four-way race, and a little over five points ahead in a two-way contest.
Nevada’s numbers from Rasmussen have the race at Trump 42%, Clinton 39%, Johnson 11%, giving Trump a 3-point lead that lies within the 4-point margin of error. (Stein will not appear on the Nevada presidential ballot.)
Rasmussen sees a comparably slim lead for Trump in the national race as well, 42% to Clinton’s 40%.
In North Carolina, an Elon University poll reports Trump 44%, Clinton 43%, Johnson 6%. (Stein is a “write-in” candidate on the North Carolina ballot.)
Elon’s poll found a “strong divide along racial lines,” with 98% support for Clinton from black voters, 65% support for Trump from whites. Trump gets 55% of male votes, while Clinton gets 53% of women. The two candidates enjoy comparable levels of support from their own parties in North Carolina, but Trump is pulling 65% of the independent vote.
In an encouraging bit of news for those who believe Trump will generate high turnout from “missing” voters, Elon found that 78% of respondents who didn’t vote in 2012 said they would vote for him in 2016.
“This election is so tight right now, that small swings of a few points should be expected between now and November. North Carolina has been extremely important over the last several election cycles with very tight election outcomes. These numbers suggest that will continue to be the case, and both campaigns would do well to continue to focus on the Old North State,” said Elon poli-sci assistant professor Jason Husser, director of the poll.
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