Thursday, November 03, 2016

SHOCK: Trump's Women Problem Appears To Have Disappeared!

By JOHN MERLINE


The latest IBD/TIPP tracking poll shows Donald Trump capturing 39% of the female vote, the same share as Mitt Romney was getting in 2012. (AP)
Weeks of wall-to-wall media coverage of Donald Trump's crude language and alleged misdeeds involving women don't seem to have hurt his standing among female voters, the IBD/TIPP presidential tracking poll shows.

That's not to say there isn't a gender gap — there's still a big one. But Trump's support among women has improved 5 points in the past three days in the wake of the FBI's stunning announcement that it is looking into a fresh batch of emails relating to Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state.
As of Tuesday, 39% of women said they're backing Trump, compared with 34% who supported Trump in Saturday's tracking poll.
And as result, the thrice-married, acid-tongued Trump is doing just as well among women as squeaky-clean Mitt Romney was doing at this point in the Oct. 28, 2012, IBD/TIPP tracking poll, when Romney also got 39% of the female vote. (Hurricane Sandy interrupted daily updates to the tracking poll after that date.)
It's worth noting that the 2012 poll asked only about Romney and Obama, while this year's results include Libertarian Gary Johnson (who is getting 4% of the female vote) and Green Party candidate Jill Stein (3%).
While Trump is polling worse than Romney among married women — 46% vs 51% — he's doing better among single women — 28% to Romney's 23%.
On the other side of the gender gap, Trump gets 50% of the male vote, the same share as Romney.
But Clinton is doing slightly worse among men than Obama was at this point in the 2012 race — she captures just 38% of men's votes, compared with Obama's 40%.
Meanwhile, Trump's supposed problem with Republicans and the #NeverTrump crowd isn't showing up in the polls, either. While many prominent GOPers have refused to support his candidacy — Ohio Gov. John Kasich announced that he wrote in Sen. John McCain's name when he voted early — Trump gets 88% support among likely Republican voters, the same as Romney. Four percent of Republicans say they plan to vote for Clinton, which is also identical to the share of Republicans who said they supported Obama in 2012.
What's more, Trump is doing slightly better with independents than Romney — 48% support Trump vs. 46% who backed Romney.
Trump is also doing far better among working class voters — 50% of whom back Trump vs 35% who supported Romney.
At the moment, Clinton is ahead of Trump by 0.9 percentage point, although this is down from 4 points just three days ago.