Hillary Clinton’s post-convention bounce has also closed the honesty gap — at least with Donald Trump. | Getty 5 numbers that mattered this week

Continuing our POLITICO feature, where we dig into the latest polls and loop in other data streams to tell the story of the 2016 campaign. Here are five numbers that mattered this week.





The enthusiasm gap now favors Democrats following last week’s national party convention in Philadelphia — at least temporarily.

A CNN/ORC poll this week finds a greater percentage of Democrats (57 percent) say they are “extremely” or “very” enthusiastic about voting for president than Republican (41 percent) or independents (35 percent).

That, like Hillary Clinton’s overall bounce in the polls, could be an artifact of timing, coming just after a convention that was — for the most part — an outward display of party unity. A CNN/ORC poll before both conventions found equal levels of excitement among both Democrats (48 percent extremely/very enthusiastic) and Republicans (49 percent).

That’s similar to a new Fox News finding this week. Fox’s pollsters asked voters how interested they are in the 2016 campaign: Equal percentages of Democrats (45 percent) and Republicans (45 percent) described themselves as “extremely interested.”

The CNN poll shows an overall decline in enthusiasm. In a post-conventions poll in 2012, 57 percent of voters overall described themselves as extremely or very enthusiastic about voting for president. This year, it’s just 44 percent.





Donald Trump appears poised to set new lows for Republican candidates among nonwhite voters.

This week’s NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows Clinton far ahead among black voters, 91 percent to 1 percent. Yes, 1 percent. (Among all non-white voters, Clinton leads, 69 percent to 17 percent).

That finding isn’t an outlier. This week’s McClatchy-Marist poll finds Trump trailing among black voters, 93 percent to 2 percent. Clinton’s lead in the Fox News poll among black voters stands at 87 percent to 4 percent.

Republicans have been mired in or around single digits among black voters — and around 20 percent among nonwhites overall — for decades. But despite Trump’s bluster, the latest raft of polls suggests he is no closer to breaking through, even as nonwhites continue to grow as an overall share of the electorate.





Clinton’s post-convention bounce has also closed the honesty gap — at least with Trump.

The same series of polls that have Clinton charging to a significant lead over Trump also show roughly equal percentages view Clinton and Trump as honest or trustworthy.

That’s not to say that Clinton has addressed her weaknesses on this measure, including her answers about her private email server while at the State Department.

But she’s pulled even with Trump: Equal percentages in this week’s Fox News poll found Clinton (36 percent) and Trump (36 percent) honest and trustworthy. A CNN/ORC poll showed similar results: 34 percent said they found Clinton honest and trustworthy, compared to 35 percent for Trump.

Slightly more voters in the McClatchy-Marist poll said “honest and trustworthy” better describes Clinton (37 percent) than Trump (33 percent).

This is likely due in some part to Clinton’s overall bounce in the polls. But doubts about Trump’s honesty render him poorly equipped to capitalize on voters’ concerns about Clinton.





If Clinton defeats Trump in the kind of landslide victory the polls are predicting in the immediate wake of the Democratic convention, a number of GOP senators are going to need significant shares of Clinton voters to cross over and support them, too.

That’s what’s happening in a Suffolk University poll in Florida this week. The poll shows Clinton with a 6-point lead over Trump in the presidential race, 48 percent to 42 percent.

But in a hypothetical Senate match-up between incumbent GOP Sen. Marco Rubio and Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy — both Rubio and Murphy are favored to win their primaries later this month — Rubio has a 13-point advantage, 46 percent to 33 percent. That’s because more than one-in-five Clinton supporters is choosing Rubio on the Senate ballot, according to the poll.

That prompts two key questions: Will that level of cross-over voting hold up? And can Republicans weather an even larger Clinton wave?

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), unlike Rubio, is struggling to outrun Trump in the same way in her campaign against popular Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan. A WBUR-FM poll this week, conducted by MassINC Polling Group, shows Ayotte winning only 11 percent of Clinton voters — not even close enough to help the first-term Republican withstand a 15-point Clinton lead on the presidential ballot.

Results were mixed in Pennsylvania: A Franklin & Marshall College poll this week gave Clinton an 11-point lead over Trump at the top of the ticket. But Democratic Senate candidate Katie McGinty only had a 1-point advantage over incumbent GOP Sen. Pat Toomey.

Cross-over voting has been on the decline in recent decades, which suggests the Senate contests will more closely reflect the presidential ballot on Election Day. If Trump’s candidacy continues to flag, expect to see Ayotte, Rubio, Toomey and a half-dozen other Republicans scramble to distance themselves even further.





The Olympic Games are a quadrennial celebration of patriotism, combined with the pinnacle of competitive achievement — a lot like our modern presidential elections.

And Clinton — the one candidate conducting a paid-advertising campaign at this point in the race — is seeking to take advantage of eyeballs NBC and its cable networks will draw to watch athletes from across the globe compete in Brazil over the next two weeks. Clinton’s campaign is spending $8 million on ads that will air across the country — in both swing states and those considered uncompetitive this fall.

That’s even as fewer Americans told Gallup they plan to watch a “great deal” or “fair amount” of the Olympics this year — which the pollster calls a “sharp drop” from the past four Summer Olympics.