Photo credit: Max Goldberg, Iowa State Daily, cropped from original (CC-By-3.0)
I wrote about Donald Trump’s downward spiral with recent polls and published before the latest McClatchy/Marist poll was released that showed Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by 15 points in a head-to-head match-up (an increase of 12 points since July) and by 14 points when Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein are factored in.
It’s bad. I do have a bone to pick with the pollsters however.
There is a definite oversampling of Democrats compared to Republicans – 36% to 27% so that is questionable. The sample size 1,132 adults that included 983 registered voters and the poll has margin of error of +/- 3.1% with registered voters, overall it is +/- 2.9%. I would like to know what turnout model they’re looking at. If it is 2008 or 2012 that could be understandable. We really don’t know what kind of turnout we are looking at with both the Republican and Democrat candidates being so unpopular.
The first thing I wanted to point outĀ only 36% of Trump supporters were voting for Trump to support him. 57% of those who said they were voting for Trump were doing so as a vote against Clinton.
The second, and primary, thing I did wanted to point out is that this poll underscores and puts an exclamation point on Trump’s Millennial problem. Voters under 30 made up 20% of the total sample, and 15% of registered voters. Obviously the smaller the subset the larger the margin of error. I just haven’t seen a poll like this yet.
In the head to head matchup, registered voters under 30 picked Clinton over Trump 53% to 17%. Ā 26% of those voters said they were voting for neither.
Now when you look at the four-way poll and frankly this is the only type of polling we should be considering this cycle in terms of accuracy. Donald Trump comes in dead last. Clinton pulls in 41% of the under 30 vote, Johnson polls at 23%, and Stein gets 16% of registered voters under 30.
Donald Trump receives only 9% of under 30 vote.
That is incredible. Republicans were going to have a rough go with Millennials regardless of who was nominated, but nominating Donald Trump was probably the worst candidate to nominate if you wanted to appeal to those voters.
Wow, wow, wow….