Poll: Clinton edges Trump in Ohio

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are running neck-and-neck in Ohio in a new poll that suggests Clinton’s post-debate bounce has brought her back in a state that had been leaning toward the Republican.

A new Monmouth University poll released Wednesday shows Clinton with a 2-point lead in Ohio, 44 percent to 42 percent — well within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.

Another 6 percent of likely voters are undecided, 5 percent say they support Libertarian Gary Johnson, 1 percent will vote for Green Party nominee Jill Stein and another 1 percent support another candidate.

Clinton’s narrow lead in the poll breaks a streak of surveys that had shown Trump ahead. Since Labor Day, Trump had led in all but one public poll of Ohio. But earlier polls portrayed a toss-up race or slight Clinton advantage — including Monmouth’s previous poll, in mid-August, which had Clinton ahead by 4 points.

The new Monmouth poll, which surveyed 405 likely voters, was conducted Saturday-Tuesday — making it slightly more recent than the other post-debate poll in the state: a Quinnipiac University survey conducted last Tuesday-Sunday that gave Trump a 5-point lead.

The tightening presidential race isn’t helping Democratic Senate candidate Ted Strickland, however: The Monmouth poll shows incumbent GOP Sen. Rob Portman leading Strickland by a staggering 15-point margin, 54 percent to 39 percent. That’s a larger margin than Portman’s 8-point lead in the mid-August Monmouth poll — and roughly in line with Portman’s 17-point lead in the Quinnipiac poll.