Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to supporters and bikers at a Rolling Thunder rally at the National Mall in Washington, Sunday, May 29. | AP Photo Poll: Trump leads in 4 bellwether counties

In the most pivotal counties in seven critical swing states, Donald Trump has a decided edge, according to a recent set of polling data collected by Axiom Strategies, the firm of Ted Cruz’s former campaign manager Jeff Roe.

Axiom identified seven counties in seven battleground states that have proved to be bellwethers in the past four elections. Trump, so far, has an edge in four of them, Hillary Clinton has an edge in two, and they’re statistically tied in one. The selected counties correctly predicted the statewide result in each of the past four elections and came closest to the actual statewide margin of victory.

The counties where Trump is ahead include Watauga County, North Carolina (+4); Sandusky County, Ohio (+5); Luzerne County, Pennsylvania (+17); and Washoe County, Nevada (+12).

Clinton, on the other hand, holds modest leads in Jefferson County, Colorado (+4), and Loudoun County, Virginia (+8).

The two are statistically tied in Tampa’s Hillsborough County, Florida.

Several caveats apply to this polling — including the fact that the general election is barely underway, so voter attitudes are far from settled. The poll was conducted using a combination of 20 percent live calls and 80 percent automated calls, a weighting that tilts toward a methodology that hasn’t been totally reliable. Each poll, all of which were in the field from June 3 to June 5, also relied on sample sizes that varied widely, from 653 likely votes in North Carolina to nearly 1,700 in difficult-to-poll Nevada.

