Clinton Starting To Gain Ground In States Romney Won in 2012
In a sign of just how bad the trends are right now for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton is gaining ground in states that Mitt Romney won four years ago.
A new poll from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump in a state that has been something of a GOP stronghold in Presidential elections for some time now:
Democrat Hillary Clinton has built a slim lead over Donald Trump in Georgia after one of the worst weeks of the Republican’s campaign, and the Libertarian presidential ticket cracked double-digits, according to a new Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll.
The poll released Friday shows Clinton at 44 percent and Trump at 40 percent in a head-to-head matchup, within the poll’s margin of error. It is the latest showing a close race between the two candidates in Georgia, a state that has voted for the GOP nominee since 1996.
In a four-way race, Clinton led Trump 41-38, followed by Libertarian Gary Johnson with 11 percent and Green Party candidate Jill Stein with 2 percent. When including which candidates voters “lean” toward, Clinton led Trump 43-39, and Johnson netted 12 percent.
The findings come after both conventions ended and a particularly rough patch for Trump, who engaged in a war of words with the family of a slain Muslim U.S. soldier and infuriated many Republicans when he refused to endorse two of the party’s top elected officials.
Friday’s survey marks a change from the last AJC poll, commissioned in May, which gave Trump a 45-41 lead over Clinton. It also shows the former secretary of state besting Trump among independents, an influential Georgia voting bloc that typically votes Republican.
Both Trump and Clinton had the exact same unfavorability rating – 58 percent – among Georgia voters. And a majority of Trump’s backers said they see their decision as a vote against Clinton rather than a vote for the New York businessman.
Johnson barely surpassed 1 percent of Georgia’s vote in the 2012 campaign, when he was also the Libertarian nominee for president. But he could be poised to do far better this year by tailoring his pitch to voters disillusioned by both Trump and Clinton, and the poll has him netting about one-fifth of support from Georgia independents.
Georgia still isn’t directly in Clinton’s crosshairs, and her campaign has yet to declare Georgia a battleground state. But a common strain from the Democratic and Republican conventions was that Georgia has the chance to turn blue for the first time since Bill Clinton’s 1992 win over President George H.W. Bush.
Georgia has gone for the Republican Presidential nominee in six of the last eight Presidential elections, with the two exceptions being former President Bill Clinton’s elections in 1992 and 1996. In those two cases, it’s likely that the state went for Clinton largely because of his southern roots and the presence of H. Ross Perot on the ballot in both of those elections. With those two exceptions, though, the Peach State has been reliably Republican in Presidential elections and in statewide elections for Governor and Senator. For some time now, though, political analysts have been predicting that Georgia poised to become a less reliably Republican state in the future due in part to the huge influx of people from other states into the Metropolitan Atlanta area over the past two decades and to the fact that a substantial part of this influx has consistent of Latinos who are more likely to vote Democratic than Republican. At the same time, most forecasts had the state staying in the GOP camp until at least 2020 or 2024. If this poll is accurate, then it would appear that the presence of Trump on the ballot as the GOP nominee may be hastening the day that Georgia follows the same trend that Virginia has followed, or at least becoming less reliably Republican at all levels.
While it may be tempting to jump to conclusions based on this one poll, though, this is yet another occasion where caution is warranted. Previous polling showed Trump holding on to a slim lead in Georgia so it’s entire possible we’re looking at an outlier here. That caution is further indicated by the fact that the RealClearPolitics head-to-head and four-way race matchups both show Trump with a slim lead based on past polling. What we will have to wait to find out is whether other polls in the state show Clinton making the state at least competitive. If it does then, the GOP may have a lot to worry about in November. Pretty much every realistically conceivable scenario for a Republican victory in November includes the assumption that Trump is able to hold on to the states that Mitt Romney won four years ago. If that’s not true, then Donald Trump is not going to win the election. Even if Trump does end up holding on to state’s like Georgia, though, the fact that Clinton may be able to expand the battle space into states that Romney won in 2012, thus requiring Trump and the GOP to expend resources in a state that they shouldn’t really need to defend, makes it far less likely that they’ll have the resources to compete in battleground states like Florida and Ohio.
In addition to Georgia, Clinton also appears to be threatening Trump in the polls in states such as North Carolina, Arizona, Missouri, and, oddly, even Utah. It’s likely that most of these states will not be battlegrounds as we get closer to Election Day, but if current trends continue it’s likely that at least one or two of them will be, and that’s going to make things quite difficult for Republicans,
I’m not sure why you think it’s odd that Trump would be doing poorly with Mormons; his personality is pretty much their antithesis.
I hope Trump fails by 40 or more points.
@grumpy realist: Yes. As David Plouffe put it:
https://twitter.com/davidplouffe/status/742462346069708800
The notion that Perot took more votes from Bush than from Clinton is a myth, but it’s particularly implausible when applied to Georgia. First of all, apart from his home state of Texas, Perot’s weakest showing was in the South. Second, in 1996 Clinton’s lead over Dole in Georgia was wider than the entirety of Perot’s support in the state, so even if you made the absurd assumption that every single one of those Perot voters would have otherwise backed Dole, Clinton still would have won the state.
I really don’t think that Clinton is beating Trump in these red states. I think Trump is beating himself.
Perhaps it is my cynical nature, but I can easily see a situation where Clinton wins several traditionally red states, but the downticket races stay in the Republican column.
I guess what I am saying is that while I think Clinton will blow Trump out of the water with a major assist from Trump himself, I doubt it will be a wave election for the Democrats.
Doug –
I don’t think people outside of Los Angeles can appreciate what is actually happening in Georgia. The state has had a HUGE influx of very liberal Hollywood Lefties due to the states burgeoning film industry. The three top Film/Television production centers in the nation are Los Angeles, NY, and Atlanta. The Georgia tax incentive has made it the biggest production center outside of LA and NYC in the USA. Most of the Marvel features are shot there. Fast and Furious franchise? Atlanta. Hunger Games? Atlanta? Divergent series? Atlanta. There are currently 53 productions shooting in Atlanta, including one of mine. I’ve done 7 shows here, and have seen Atlanta go from Red to Purple to solid Blue. It’s just a matter of time that Georgia becomes like Virginia – rural = red, and urban = blue, but the urban centers will have such a huge advantage that it will wipe out the rest of the state. Heck, if Georgia Democrats could figure out how to get more African Americans registered and to the polls, it would happen this year.
It’s pure demographics. Contrary to popular opinion, Georgia is only about 59% white. By 2024, Georgia will be reliably Blue.
Good. If they have to spend time and money here in these states, they can’t spend it elsewhere. For the record I don’t see Hillary winning here in Misery. Just don’t see it.
In 1988, Dukakis won 40% of the vote in Georgia and lost the state
In 1996, Clinton won 46% of the vote in Georgia and lost the state
In 2000, Gore won 43% of the vote in Georgia and lost the state
In 2004, Kerry won 41% of the vote in Georgia and lost the state
In 2008, Obama won 47% of the vote in Georgia and lost the state
In 2012, Obama won 45% of the vote in Georgia and lost the state
In 1992, Clinton won 43% of the vote in Georgia and won the state
I am familiar with the arguments that Perot pulled equally from both sides in 1992. But it’s difficult to look at statewide results such as those and conclude that the claim is entirely accurate. We’re back to that pesky electoral college again that can award a landslide electoral vote win to a candidate with a 43% plurality.
In 1992, Clinton won 43% of the vote in Arizona and won
@Pch101:
Sorry for the Arizona typo above, ignore it. (Can’t edit, sorry.)
Going back to fix my typo above…
In 1988, Dukakis lost with 46% of the vote, while Bush won 53%.
Clinton won 43% of the national vote in 1992, defeating Bush with 37% of the vote.
Clinton won about 3.1 million more votes in 1992 than had Dukakis in 1988, while Bush had about 9.8 million fewer votes in 1992 than he had in 1988.
Comparing those two races, Bush obviously had a much larger shortfall in 1992 than did the Democrats. That does create some doubt about the equal spoiler theory, given the 3% decline for the Dems vs. 16% for the GOP combined with the significant decline in the number of Republican voters vs. an increase for the Democrats.
Here’s the thing: People may dislike Clinton, they may regard her as a liar/crook/whatever, but they trust her more than they do a lunatic, which is what Trump is, as is becoming increasingly obvious as the days pass.
No one wants to trust a lunatic with the nuclear codes. it’s that simple.
@EddieInCA: While I do understand your argument, my counterargument would be that, going purely by population demographics rather than voter demographics, Texas should be a purple state. As should Arizona.
On the other hand, the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, which has usually had Clinton farther ahead than others, has her up only by 3%.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll-idUSKCN10G2BQ?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=57a50d8d04d3016f936152b0&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook
Bob Dole was father behind Bill Clinton in 1996 than Trump is behind Hillary now, and Dole was consistently behind by far more than Trump has been. No one was freaking out about it. Stop reacting to Trump like he’s some sort of boogie man and you constantly need a reassuring nightlight to keep him at bay.
Mike
@MBunge: I wasn’t deathly afraid Dole would win. The stakes were not nearly as high.
@MBunge:
You must be so sad.
@Gromitt Gunn:
Against that, here is 538:
Given a good economy, a popular President, and the ongoing disaster that is the Trump campaign, I think liberals have reasons to be cheerful, for once.
Oh lord. Now it looks like there might have been another marriage in Melania Trump’s past in order to get her a Green Card?
If this is true I won’t be able to stop laughing.
@grumpy realist:
Thanks for the link. The comments after the article are hilarious. I particularly enjoyed this one: “We need to suspend any future First Ladies until we figure out what the hell is going on.”
@grumpy realist:
CNN had a report about her unpaid modeling shoot in the US in 1995. It would appear that she did not have a work visa, which would suggest that she was here on a tourist visa.
The network also claimed that the photo shoot would have been legal because it was unpaid. But I’m pretty certain that unpaid work that isn’t charitable is not permitted with a tourist visa. So that may be another violation.
(I personally don’t care much about lies related to the modeling. But the law is the law and the hypocrisy is more than just a little obvious…)
@Pch101:
I’m reasonably sure that US labor law has much more sarcastic things to say about unpaid labor for someone else’s profit than it does about visa violations.
@stonetoolsPerhaps my experiences living in Texas since 2002 have left me susceptible to truthiness in the subject of Southern voting. We shall see.
@Pch101: There is the possibility that false statements were made on official documents and wouldn’t that be the equivalent of perjury? Very F*ing serious thing perjury. Got a President impeached, I seem to recall.
@JohnMcC: Supposedly Melania was against Trump running for POTUS. There may have been more of a reason than simple disruption of family life…
(Trump, I am convinced, is probably so batsh*t that he didn’t even realize there could possibly be a problem. He’ll just bluster over it.)
(At some point reality is going to hit Trump with the impact of an asteroid strike…..)
Earlier today I glanced at the internals of that AJC poll and found a couple of items that interested me. First one was that the highest percentage of respondents who favored Mr Trump was “white/evangelical Christians” who went to the Cheeto Jesus by 75%. Having lived my life in the south and knowing that demographic quite well I was not surprised.
They divided income groups into three groups — less than $50K, $50-to-100K and more than $100K. The lowest income and the highest income groups both favored Ms Clinton. I supposed that the less-than-$50,000/yr group reflected the racial breakdown but still — “working class” is surely the wrong appellation for Mr Trump’s constituency.
@MBunge:
Dole
I disagreed with Dole on most things political. That being said, his character was not in question. His ability to do the job was not in question. His loyalty to our country was not in question. His sanity was not in question.
Trump? All of those things are in question. And Republicans want to make him the most powerful man in the world.
A rundown by Wonkette of the person who is running as VP of the Green ticket.
Sometimes I understand Rod Dreher’s antipathy to SJW types. There’s “Progressive”, and then there’s where the loony left wraps around and ends in the same total craziness as the batsh*t right.
@MBunge:
He is a boogie man. He is the most dangerously unbalanced, most completely ignorant, most immature, most pathologically dishonest person to run for president in my life time. And I was around for Nixon and George Wallace.
Nixon was a virtual George Washington compared to Trump. Nixon was a model of honesty compared to Trump. Nixon’s left pinkie finger knew more about the world than Trump. Nixon’s anus was less crude, vile and disgusting than Trump.
Really, it’s time to wake up, Mike. It really is that bad. The mere fact that the United States of America has this caliber of person representing a major party will be a black mark on American democracy and American honor which will not soon be washed off. We are embarrassing ourselves. We are shaking the world’s faith in our capacity for self-government.
This is the worst thing I’ve seen in politics in this country. By far.
@michael reynolds: I love the compare-and-contrast with Pres Nixon’s anus. You can tell the work of a professional!
Relatedly, I’ve been thinking of poking around the interwebs a bit and writing a comment about how Mr Trump is making us nostalgic for GWBush. You know, those good ol’ days.
Bunge resides in a place in which the Clintons are so very bad that they would give Hitler a run for his money. He will defend someone such as Trump because Trump isn’t a Clinton.
The thing is that Bunge not alone. There is a segment of the population that has decided that the Clintons are evil incarnate, and nothing is going to convince them otherwise. That won’t prevent her from winning, but there will be a chorus of hysterical shrieking before, during and after the fact. (Note to self: Buy earplugs.)
@JohnMcC:
It’s why they pay me, dude. It takes a professional. You don’t want amateurs running around dropping anus references.
@Pch101:
And yet when you ask them to make the case that the Clintons are evil, they’ve got 1) Bill screwing an intern, 2) Hillary claiming a video was the cause of the Benghazi thing, and 3) emails.
Because somehow those epitomize evil.
Whereas acting as butt boy to Vladimir Putin, trashing NATO and volunteering to give up the Baltics, ripping off everyone who’s ever worked for you, running a phony fraudulent school, leering at your own daughter, proposing the ethnic cleansing of 11 million people, attacking the legitimacy of the president, and. . . I could go on for hours … all that’s just fun and games.
It is a complete and utter failure of prioritization. It’s a total intellectual breakdown. It’s bizarre behavior.
There’s an interesting article at http://www.observer.com by John R.Schindler explaining in detail exactly why Trump is, in fact, Putin’s buttboy.
@JohnMcC:
I don’t think that it’s a matter of perjury, but the feds have the authority to ask questions of those who are not Americans who wish to enter the US and to deny them entry based in part on how those questions are answered.
If she was here on a B2 visa (that’s a guess based upon what was in the report — in 1995, she would have needed a visa because Slovenian citizens were not included in the visa waiver program), then she could visit the US for “pleasure”, as opposed to “business.” As the feds define it, “pleasure” is “legitimate activities of a recreational character, including tourism, amusement, visits with friends or relatives, rest, medical treatment, and activities of a fraternal, social, or service nature.” Business is comprised of “activities of a commercial or professional nature”
Getting paid is not the essence of what distinguishes “pleasure” from “business.” Someone who is paying to attend a conference would need to get a business visa, for example.
It’s tough to argue that an aspiring model who visits the US in order to be photographed by a professional photographer in the hopes that the photos are published is visiting for “pleasure,” even if she did it for free.
There isn’t much reason to expect that she disclosed her intent to be photographed (for free or otherwise) when entering the US. If she had, then she probably would have been turned away. Had this been discovered after the fact when she applied for a subsequent visa or a green card, then that could have resulted in her being denied.
So I seriously doubt that her claims that she came her legally and did it “the right way” are accurate. A news organization should chase this down.
One new poll even has Clinton up by 15 points today, although I think the polls with a 8 to 10 point margin may be more accurate. But, if she is indeed leading by 15 points, she would likely garner close to 400 electoral votes and that should pull along some states like Arizona or possibly even Georgia. If her margin grows to 20 points by election day, then she might win most states except Mississippi or some deep South states carried by Barry Goldwater in 1964.
@Pch101: Given the difficulty of even getting into certain particular countries if you’re above-board about what you’re doing (don’t even TRY to get a visa to Thailand if you’re going there for a deposition of a Thai citizen in a US lawsuit) I’m not gonna throw my hands up in horror when it’s discovered that Trump’s present wife was a little loosey-goosey with US visa classifications because our damn visa/immigration set-up is something designed by Kafka and implemented by Rube Goldberg. (While in Japan I had to help a Chinese friend of mine get a visa to the US to attend a conference and because her husband was in an official position you would not BELIEVE the number of forms I had to schlep back back and forth.)
Concentrating on Melenia’s antics, however, is a great way to embarrass Trump, snicker.
The idiot has doubled down again.
Can we chip together enough to send this nitwit a history of WWII? The reason Japan’s Self-Defense Forces are set up the way they are and the Japanese have US bases on their soil is because we set it up that way at the end of WWII. You’d think that someone who is 70 years old would know that, but noooooo……
The mind boggles.
@grumpy realist:
Oh, I could. A fellow teacher in Korea had a story from when he took a trip to Japan to attend a conference. He thought it might be nice for his wife to come with him. He is a US citizen, she is a Russian national. His entry form was given to him on the airplane and is the size of a 3×5 card (I’d filled out the same form on a visa run twice while I was there). Her form had to be obtained from the Japanese consulate and was 45 pages long. She decided not to go with him.
@Just ‘nutha ig’rant cracker: @grumpy realist:
Couple of years ago I looked into the whole issue of Visa allocation and Green Card distribution. Incredible stupidity. I concluded that we had created the whole problem of student/tourist over-stays and RioGrande crossers by making an immense maze of our legal system for entry and immigration.
@grumpy realist:
I was with my wife through the process of getting her “green card” and later becoming a naturalized American citizen. I absolutely would believe the number of forms you had to schlep back and forth!
And then there was this: we went to start the naturalization process. Lots of forms, several hundred dollars in fees, and fingerprints. All done at the local immigration center. Months pass, no word. I start calling every week and keeping track of who I talked to and what was said. All assurances the process was moving forward, etc. etc. (Lies!) Now we’ve been waiting a full year and I go to my boss and tell him “I don’t know what’s going on with this, I’ve been calling and calling and no response.” (This is relevant because I was getting a security clearance and the agency wouldn’t clear me until my wife was an American.) Fortunately, his ex is dating an immigration lawyer. We get in touch, I send the lawyer all my notes, he makes a few calls. Progress, finally! Now we have to go down to the immigration center again because the fingerprints are too old and they have to take them again. Finally, a couple weeks later, she goes in for the citizenship interview and test and gets the go-ahead to take the oath of citizenship. After about 15 months. Unfrickingbelievable.
A couple weeks later we see in the news that the guy who ran that particular immigration center had been arrested for taking bribes. I said, “See, that was our mistake, we didn’t slip that asshole a couple Benjamins…”
Holy crap, this is probably the most scathing piece I’ve read on Trump–and it was written by a Republican, political strategist Rick Wilson.
Beat him like a drum: Donald Trump must not just lose in November; to correct the institutions he’s broken, he must suffer a humiliating defeat
Wilson is not kind to his own party:
Or Trump’s supporters:
Or the right-wing media:
Wow. Go read the whole thing.
@Mikey:
Yeah, he unloaded. Good for him. Now where are the rest of the Republicans with principles and spines?
@Mikey:
Wilson’s Twitter feed is “must follow” this election season.
I continue to think the people who should be most scared of a Trump presidency are those on the right.
@michael reynolds:
Few and far between, indeed. You’d probably be able to count them with a finger or two to spare.
I’ve no sympathy for any of them, pro- or anti-Trump. They built this monster, now they want to chase it out of town? They should have seen what it would be.
@Mikey:
That was a fun rant. But I doubt that I’d like Rick Wilson’s version of the GOP much better than Trump’s.
Nobody should be surprised that forty years of the Southern Strategy has led to this. And it all began with their hero Ronald Reagan who set the tone with “states rights” and continues until this day with the GOP establishment’s ongoing efforts to disenfranchise minority voters.
If Trump was more of a fan of free trade and unborn fetuses, then they would find all kinds of reasons to like him.
@Mikey: No kidding! As I have noted a few times here and there, his opponents didn’t run against him; mostly, they ran as better, stronger, more effective versions of Trump.
@grumpy realist:
I can’t fault Melania Trump for gaming the visa system; she had ambitions to live here, and didn’t initially have the cash, connections or employer that were needed to make it happen the “right” way. Her case is certainly not unique.
Still, I would like Trump to be asked about his plans to deport his wife if he is elected president. At the very least, we should send her back until we figure out what is going on…
@michael reynolds:
THIS, in all caps. Recently I challenged James to actually list out the incredible dishonest idea that Hillary was supposed to have committed. His reply was a linked list of five. Three of them were dodgy companies or individuals that the Clinton foundation had gotten to support things like education programs in rural India. Only one was legit and (admittedly my memory may be faulty here) it was the BS she spewed when she demanded the head of the White House travel agency thirty years ago.
Even James felt a bit embarassed that this was the list he came up with and alluded to a lack of time to dig deeper.
He should be embarrassed. The Hillary is Evil idiocy is ladled from the same pot as Trump Stew.