Hot-Headed? Hot and Bothered? Trump Trails Clinton in Latest Poll

Trump too hot headed
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A new Fox News poll shows that support for Donald Trump has dropped seven points since May. In May, Trump was up by three points, but now Hillary Clinton leads Trump 44-38 percent, a lead that is just inside the margin of sampling error.

The national poll shows that Clinton has the “voter confidence” edge on being the candidate who will make the “right” decisions for the country.  Clinton has a commanding lead among African American voters, and leads with women voters, voters under age 45, and voters earning less than $50,000. Alternatively, Trump leads among men, independents, gun owners, and white voters in general. Since May, Trump has lost ground with Republicans, showing that party unity remains a problem area for The Donald, who has the support of only 74 percent of Republicans. Hillary Clinton, by comparison, has the support of 83 percent of Democrats. And just over 50 percent of voters loyal to the GOP would prefer a different nominee than Trump.  While most voters view Trump as intelligent and the best candidate for the economy, more than 70 percent describe him as obnoxious and hot-headed.

And what about the conversion of Bernie voters?  The current poll shows 66 percent of those who prefer Sanders would back Clinton versus Trump. Clinton’s biggest problem remains honesty and trustworthiness; a record low 30 percent think she is neither, and 58 percent of those polled describe her as “corrupt”. Trump doesn’t fare much better, with 34 percent saying he is neither “honest and trustworthy” and 45 percent saying that he is“corrupt”. And most pundits agree that Trump’s biggest challenge is changing the growing perception that he is temperamental and thus unprepared to be president.

Nevertheless, Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who conducted the Fox News poll alongside Democratic pollster Chris Anderson says, “the results here aren’t disastrous for Trump, given the troubles he’s encountered the past few weeks. He’s within striking distance. “This race is nowhere close to breaking open, despite some huge perceived deficiencies in Trump’s character.”

The Libertarian angle presents an interesting scatter, with candidate Gary Johnson capturing 10 percent of a three-way vote and causing both Trump and Clinton to lose votes. Most voters who back Clinton and Trump in a two-way race would do so in the three-way scenario as well (Clinton: 92 percent, Trump 89 percent), giving Clinton an ever-so-slight edge(41-36 percent),

Fox News randomly chose 1,017 registered voters nationwide and conducted telephone interviews.