Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump among registered voters by just three points, 42-39, in a new national McClatchy-Marist poll released on Wednesday.
In the last McClatchy-Marist poll released in early April, Clinton led Trump by nine points, 50-41, among registered voters.
When third-party candidates are added to the question, it’s Clinton 40, Trump 35, Libertarian Gary Johnson 10, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein 5.
Marist began conducting the survey the day that FBI Director James Comey announced that the FBI would not recommend bringing charges against Clinton regarding the investigation into her private email server.
Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in New York, indicated to McClatchy that the email probe is still impacting Clinton in the polls.
“The good news for Hillary Clinton is that despite a very rough week, she still has a narrow edge,” Miringoff said. “The bad news is these issues don’t seem to be going away.”
Clinton’s lead over Trump also took a hit in the NBC/Survey Monkey weekly tracking poll for the past two weeks. In Tuesday’s tracking poll, Clinton had a three-point lead over Trump, down from a five-point lead the previous week.
Marist surveyed 1,053 registered voters via phone July 5-9 with a margin of error plus or minus 3 percentage points.
If it’s not a close race, people will stop paying attention. Too much is lost if it looks like Clinton will run away with it.
The story arc requires drama and suspense. Otherwise, nobody cares and nobody makes any money. The presidential cycle is like the World Series, the Superbowl and the Olympics all wrapped up into one orgiastic money changing fist fuck. Of course the polls will contract. Of course Hillary will “stumble” and Trump will surge. The system requires it.
The issues aren’t going away but the focus on the email server will. Remember congress is about to go on a 7 week vacation. Without the Republican committee chairs the email server story will move to the back of the meme bus. Her polling will return to its previous level soon enough.
well Cleveland should be interesting…
Too early to start sweating every bad poll or drinking champagne with every good poll. Let’s see where we are in mid-September. That said, the key decision for HRC is her VP. My gut tells me Warren would move the needle in her favor among white working class voters and Stein fans. But no doubt there is an alternative that would be positive, too.