CAN SHE KEEP IT?
A new Democratic poll shows Hillary Clinton retaking the lead from GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump in Pennsylvania – a state Trump absolutely must win if he hopes to capture the presidency.
North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling (PPP) surveyed Keystone State voters in the aftermath of the Democratic national convention – which was held in Philadelphia.
According to the results, 45 percent of respondents favored Clinton compared to 42 percent who backed Trump. Four percent supported Libertarian party nominee Gary Johnson and two percent supported Green party nominee Jill Stein.
In a head-to-head matchup, Clinton leads Trump by a 49-45 percent margin – according to PPP.
No “Republican” has won Pennsylvania since 1988 – but Trump has been giving Clinton a run for her money there in recent weeks.
He’ll have to keep it up …
One encouraging bit of news for “The Donald?” New voter registration in the state has been overwhelmingly “Republican” in recent months – with 175,471 new GOP additions to the voting rolls since last November compared to just 99,711 newly-registered Democrats.
By contrast, Democrats out-registered “Republicans” by nearly a 2-to-1 margin during the months leading up to the 2012 election.
According to Dave Wasserman of The Cook Report, Clinton’s campaign has not been “doing the work on the ground they could be doing to safeguard” their advantage in this critical swing state.
Specifically, Wasserman said that areas with Hispanic population booms have not seen similar gains in voter registration.
“There’s almost no trace of corresponding voter (registration) surge,” he tweeted.
Interesting …
Obviously we’ll keep an eye on those numbers – and future poll numbers coming out of Pennsylvania (and Ohio, Florida, North Carolina and the other swing states).