Something very interesting has happened over the past two weeks in the presidential campaign: Donald Trump has seized the momentum from Hillary Clinton and is climbing back into contention in both national and key swing state polling.
New polls released over the past 24 hours confirm this momentum. In Ohio, Trump leads Clinton by five points in a new Bloomberg Politics poll and a similar five in a CNN poll. In Florida, Trump has a three-point lead on Clinton. In Nevada, Trump has a two-point edge, according to a Monmouth University survey. And in the latest weekly tracking poll from NBC and Survey Monkey, Clinton’s national lead has shrunk to just four points. In the RealClearPolitics polling average of all national surveys, Clinton’s lead has shrunk to two points over Trump.
How did we get here?
Trump was at an artificially low point in the wake of the Democratic National Convention and his still-baffling decision to spend days in a verbal back and forth with a Gold Star family. Clinton rallied Democrats to her cause at that convention, giving them a reason to be proactively for her. Meanwhile, Trump’s battle with the Khan family affirmed the deepest fears of lots of Republican voters — that he was bigoted or, at the very least, playing to some of the darker places in people.
National Polling Data
| Poll | Date | Sample | MoE |
Clinton (D)
|
Trump (R)
|
Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RCP Average | 8/26 – 9/14 | — | — | 45.8 | 44.0 | Clinton +1.8 |
| CBS News/NY Times | 9/9 – 9/13 | 1433 LV | 3.0 | 46 | 44 | Clinton +2 |
| Economist/YouGov | 9/10 – 9/13 | 926 RV | 4.0 | 46 | 44 | Clinton +2 |
| LA Times/USC Tracking | 9/8 – 9/14 | 2499 LV | 4.5 | 41 | 47 | Trump +6 |
| Quinnipiac | 9/8 – 9/13 | 960 LV | 3.2 | 48 | 43 | Clinton +5 |
| Reuters/Ipsos | 9/8 – 9/12 | 1127 LV | 3.3 | 40 | 39 | Clinton +1 |
| NBC News/SM | 9/5 – 9/11 | 16220 RV | 1.1 | 48 | 44 | Clinton +4 |
| ABC News/Wash Post | 9/5 – 9/8 | 642 LV | 4.5 | 51 | 43 | Clinton +8 |
| CNN/ORC | 9/1 – 9/4 | 786 LV | 3.5 | 48 | 49 | Trump +1 |
| IBD/TIPP | 8/26 – 9/1 | 861 LV | 3.4 | 44 | 43 | Clinton +1 |
