Nevada voters are anxious about controlling the southern border, immigration, refugees, and the country’s direction, according to the Breitbart/Gravis poll conducted Oct. 25 with 875 registered voters.
“Voters in Nevada are going to get a lot of attention in the last days of the campaign,” said Doug Kaplan, the managing partner of Gravis Marketing, the Florida-based polling company that executed the poll. The poll carries a 3.3 percent margin of error with a 95 percent level of confidence.
The poll showed that in the presidential preference that former first lady Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, tied with her GOP rival Donald J. Trump at 46 percent, he said.
In the Senate race to replace retiring Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid, the Democrat’s anointed successor Catherine Cortez Masto is ahead of GOP Rep. Joe Heck with 50 percent of the vote to his 44 percent, he said.
“Nevada is very hotly contested for both its six electoral votes and its open Senate seat,” he said. In the 2012 presidential campaign, President Barack Obama won Nevada with 52 percent of the vote to 46 percent for his Republican challenger W. Mitt Romney.
Kaplan said, “It’s a close race. In Nevada with a heavily Hispanic population lots of new voters ground game matters, which is a negative for Trump.”
Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview about the Nevada poll that Trump has an intensity advantage.
“Because of her upper-income support, her voters tend to be more regular voters,” he said. “But, Trump voters tend to be much more interested–despite being self-reported as voting less often or regularly–that is an indication that he is going to have a stronger turnout than she is going to have.”
It is a good sign for Trump that his voters are showing a higher interest in voting than her supporters, he said.
When you put together the numbers for those voters taking the Trump positions on securing the border and refugee programs, not only is it a huge majority, but it includes a solid segment of Clinton’s voters, too, he said.
“If Trump can turn this into a referendum election on the issues, he wins,” he said.
Going head-to-head with Clinton based on personality or character is much more risky for him, he said.
“Trump needs to elevate,” said Caddell, who was the pollster advising three consecutive Democratic nominees in 1972, 1976, and 1980–along with a close second in 1984.
“By elevating, I mean that Trump needs to lift the debate above the personality contest and make it about the issues–where the voters agree with him by large margins,” he said.
Caddell said voters in Nevada are tracking national polling in their negative view of the mainstream media.
Respondents were asked:
Regardless of whether you are for Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, or another candidate, which of the following is closest to your opinion? The behavior of the vast majority of the media in favor of Hillary Clinton and biased against Donald Trump, including not covering certain stories, is a threat to the people’s right to know and to American democracy or Such conduct is normal and is not that important and not a threat to the people’s right to know and to American democracy.
Caddell said that the fact that 52 percent agreed that the media’s coverage is threat to democracy, compared to 37 percent who dismissed it as normal and not a threat, speaks to the frustration voters are feeling: “I think those are pretty compelling numbers.”
Those numbers dovetail with the 50 percent of respondents who said the media favors Clinton, compared to the 8 percent who said the media favors Trump, he said.
Asked about their concern about securing the southern border and immigration, 70 percent of the respondents said they were concerned–50 percent saying that they were very concerned.
A number of questions in the poll dealt with voters’ attitude about the state of affairs.
Fifty-two percent of respondents said the country was going in the wrong direction, and 42 percent said the country was going in the right direction.
In the same vein, 54 percent of poll participants said they want the next president to change the direction of the country and pursue new polices, and 42 percent said they want the next president to continue the policies of President Barack Obama.
The poll was executed before news broke Friday that FBI Director James B. Comey Jr., wrote to congressional leaders to inform them that new emails have been discovered that are relevant to the investigation into Clinton’s handling of sensitive electronic correspondence. Comey previously announced July 5 that he would recommend to the Department of Justice decline to prosecute Clinton.
Respondents were asked:
The FBI has concluded that Hillary Clinton potentially exposed top secret information to hostile countries when she used a private email server when she was Secretary of State but the agency has decided not to seek a criminal indictment of her. Which is closer to your view? The FBI made the correct decision and she should not have been prosecuted. or The FBI made the wrong decision and she should have been prosecuted.
Fifty percent of the respondents said it was the wrong decision, while 45 percent said it was the correct decision.
An issue that becomes very contested in Nevada is not just the settling of refugees into the state, but also the concerns about the health of the refugees, especially the number of them carrying tuberculosis, which is being withheld from the public.
Asked if they supported the president’s plan to increase the number of refugees brought into the country from 85,000 to 110,000, 24 percent said they supported the increase, 18 percent said they wanted to stay at 85,000, 24 percent said they supported a reduction and 34 percent said they wanted the refugee program stopped. The reduction and stop position combined represents 59 percent of the voters.
When they were asked if they agreed with the following statement: “For years, the political elites have governed America for their own benefit— and to the detriment of the American people. This election is the best chance in our lives to take back our government and change course,” sixty-four percent said they agreed, broken down as 10 percent agreeing plus 54 percent agreeing strongly.
Asked: “Do you believe that Syrian refugees arriving in the United States have been subjected to the most rigorous security vetting, as the Obama Administration claims?” fifty-two percent said they believed the administration’s claims and 38 percent said they believed the claims.
Virtually the strongest reaction to any question in the poll came in regards to Clinton’s own plan for increasing the number of Syrian refugees. Only 26 percent said they supported an increase and 65 percent rejected an increase in Syrian refugees.
The poll was conducted using interactive voice response polling with results weighted to match a proprietary turnout model.
Thirty-nine percent of respondent were Democrats, 32 percent were Independents and 29 percent were Republicans.
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