Quinnipiac Poll: Clinton 43% Trump 42%
At least that’s the conclusion of the latest Quinnipiac Poll that paired Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton against GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump.
They found 43% are backing Clinton while 42% support Trump. This is not much different from their survey last month which showed a 45% to 42% advantage for the former Secretary of State.
Breaking the numbers down, each candidate has strong support among their party with Clinton leading 82-7 with Dems and Trump ahead 82-6 with Republicans. Trump is leading at the moment with independents, 43-36.
There are huge demographic differences in this match-up, none bigger than the gender gap.
By a 51% to 32% margin, women prefer Clinton. Meanwhile, men support Trump 54% to 33%.
Non-whites skew heavily in Hillary’s favor, 74-14, while whites favor Donald, 48-37. His margin among white voters though is driven by males, 60-28, as white women narrowly favor the female candidate, 45-39.
Quinnipiac also found quite a large educational gap as college graduates support Clinton 47% to 38%. Those that did not graduate college on the other hand, back Trump 45% to 40%.
When broken down by age, Clinton does best with 18-34 year olds (43/36) and 50-64 year olds (46/42). Trump is ahead with those over 65 (49/42) and 35-49 year olds (43/42).
One trend to look for is whether Bernie Sanders’ enthusiastic young voters move to the Clinton camp or decide to stay home. 13% of 18-34 year olds said they wouldn’t vote in a Clinton-Trump match-up.
Favorability
While Trump is still slightly behind Clinton, he can take some satisfaction in the fact that his favorable numbers are better. Just 39% view him favorably against 55% who view him unfavorably. That still beats Clinton’s numbers, though, as 37% have a favorable impression of her while 58% have an unfavorable one.
Once again, Clinton could use the help of Sanders as her overall rating is dragged down by an anemic 23% favorability rating with young voters alongside a 70% unfavorable number.
Issues
Trump also has an edge on the issues as respondents believe he would do a better job than Clinton in handling the economy (51/42) and terrorism (47/46).
Yet PA voters disagree with The Donald on his key pledge. 51% oppose building a wall along the Mexican border against 45% that support such a move. Also, 58% support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
Personalities
Voters don’t think either candidate is particularly honest or trustworthy. Nevertheless, Trump (39/55) performs better than Clinton does (30/67). Once again, Hillary is being dragged down by the opinion of young people (16/84) who are likely angry that she is poised to beat Bernie in the Democratic primary.
Both Donald and Hillary are considered to have strong leadership qualities, though, and Trump (62/37) again leads Clinton (58/40) in this category.
The former Secretary of State regains the upper hand on the question of who cares more about the needs of people like you. While her 44-52 split isn’t great, it’s better than Trump’s 39-58 split.
There is also a gigantic difference when it comes to who voters think has the right personality and temperament to handle an international crisis. Clinton (55/42) is vastly ahead of Trump (33/62) by that measure.
Respondents were also asked who had the higher moral standards and 48% went with Clinton as opposed to 39% that chose Trump.
Finally, by a 52% to 35% margin, voters believe Hillary is more intelligent than Donald.
This survey was conducted by Quinnipiac University using live interviewers calling land lines and cell phones from April 27th to May 8th. They contacted 1,077 registered voters. The margin of error is +/- 3%.
