Clinton’s Lead Over Trump Down To Three Percent While Sanders Leads By Eleven

Trump Clinton

For the last few months it appeared that it might not matter how unpopular Hillary Clinton is in terms of a general election victory as at least she could beat Donald Trump. There are three major flaws in this viewpoint. The first is that even if Clinton could win the general election, having her as president is quite undesirable. The second is that it is far from certain that Trump will win the nomination considering how hard the Republicans are trying to prevent a first ballot victory, freeing delegates to support another candidate. Clinton has not been polling well against potential candidates other than Trump. Thirdly, Clinton’s lead over Trump is evaporating.

The GW Battleground poll shows Clinton only beating Trump by three points (within the margin of error), while Sanders beats him by 11. The poll also shows that 46 percent say they would consider voting for Clinton while 53 percent say they would not consider voting for her in the general election. In comparison, 51 percent say they would consider voting for Sanders and 47 percent say they would not. Trump’s numbers are also under water here, but the head-to-head battle shows that many who would not consider voting for him would do so if Clinton was his opponent

It is notable that Clinton’s support is already falling while in a primary battle in which Sanders is not even mentioning many of the scandals involving Clinton, which would probably hurt her further in the general election. Plus, with Clinton tying herself so closely to Obama during the primary battle, any bad news on the economy or internationally this fall could seriously hurt her.

Of course before looking ahead too much to the general election, we still need to concentrate on the primary battle. Public Policy Polling shows Sanders narrowing the gap with Clinton in tomorrow’s primaries, but he needs strong victories to reduce Clinton’s delegate lead.