Poll: Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton in Ohio
Donald Trump is leading Hillary Clinton by a five-point margin in the key battleground state of Ohio, according to a new poll released Wednesday.
A Bloomberg Politics survey found the Republican presidential nominee leads 48 percent to 43 percent among likely voters in the Rust Belt state. Nine percent of likely voters said they were not sure or not voting for either. When third-party candidates are factored in, Trump’s advantage remains: 44 percent to 39 percent. Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson received 10 percent of support, and the Green Party’s Jill Stein garners 3 percent.
The poll was conducted from Sept. 9-12, just as Clinton faced questions over her health along with wide backlash for her comments that Trump’s backers are in a “basket of deplorables.”
Its results differ from other surveys in roughly the same time period, including CBS News’ battleground tracker poll, which had the former secretary of state up by seven points compared to Trump, 46 percent to 39 percent.
According to the Bloomberg survey, the GOP nominee benefits from a demographic advantage in Ohio, a state which has favored the winning presidential candidate in every national election since 1964. Trump has the lead over Clinton among white men overall (a 27-point advantage) and white women without a college degree (a 23-point edge).
According to Iowa-based pollster J. Ann Selzer, whose company conducted the survey for Bloomberg, a larger portion than usual of men and older voters -- typically groups that favor the Republican party -- passed the survey’s likely-voter screening. That brought the poll’s share of identified Republicans surveyed (43 percent, compared to 36 percent that were Democrats) to numbers larger than those in other polls -- or seen in recent presidential years. (In 2012 for example, Ohio turned out more Democratic voters than Republican. Exit polls showed 38 percent of Ohio’s electorate identified as Democrats, and 31 percent identified as Republicans.)
The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points and included interviews with 802 likely Ohio voters.