Donald Trump ended his losing streak against Hillary Clinton in the polls this week. | 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.





Donald Trump loves the polls again. Or at least one poll.

His long losing streak, which stretched back to mid-May, finally ended this week, when an automated Rasmussen Reports survey showed him pulling ahead of Hillary Clinton.

“Rasmussen, one of the most highly respected polls, just came out,” Trump said Thursday at a campaign event in Manchester, N.H. “We’re four points ahead!”

In reality, Rasmussen has historically been more biased toward Republicans than most other pollsters, according to the website FiveThirtyEight — which found their polls were, on average, about two points too Republican.

And unfortunately for Trump, there’s little other evidence he’s actually closing the gap. Other polls over roughly the same time frame show Clinton leading, and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee holds a 6.1-point advantage in the latest HuffPost Pollster model and a 4.8-point lead in the RealClearPolitics average. (In POLITICO’s Battleground State polling average, Clinton is ahead by 6.3 points.)

But the result was still good enough to tout at his rally Thursday — and to retweet the Trump-friendly Drudge Report’s post on the poll: the text “43-39,” with a link to a Daily Mail story about the poll.

Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity mentioned the poll as he introduced Trump at the top of his program on Thursday night.

“Mr. Trump, good to see you,” Hannity said. “I bet that poll makes you pretty happy.”

“It does,” Trump replied.





Trump is “obnoxious,” “hot-headed” — and patriotic.

Clinton is “experienced” and “intelligent” — but she’s also “corrupt,” and she’s not very “honest” or “trustworthy.”

A Fox News poll this week tested a number of attributes for each of the presumptive major-party nominees, finding Clinton scoring well on characteristics related to competence, but poorly on honesty.

Trump, on the other hand, is viewed as more volatile, but fewer voters described him as corrupt.

Here’s the breakdown: 89 percent of voters view Trump as “hot-headed,” and 83 percent think he’s obnoxious. About two thirds, 66 percent, think he’s “intelligent,” and 63 percent say he’s “patriotic.” His lowest scores come on “experienced” (34 percent), “honest and trustworthy” and “sensible” (35 percent).

Clinton’s best attributes are “intelligent” (82 percent) and “experienced” (77 percent). She scores lower than Trump on “patriotic” (60 percent) and “honest and trustworthy” (30 percent). And 58 percent say she’s “corrupt.”





Support for a third-party candidate is a good indicator of voters’ distaste for the two major-party candidates — and it’s clear from a new study of battleground-state voters that younger voters are more disillusioned than their older counterparts.

A poll from the Democratic firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research — conducted for two pro-Democratic groups, Democracy Corps and Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund — found overall support for Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson across the nine swing states surveyed at 11 percent.

But that’s driven mostly by young voters: Johnson wins 22 percent of millennials, including 25 percent of white millennials, the poll shows. By contrast, only 13 percent of Generation-X voters, 5 percent of Baby Boomers and 5 percent of older voters said they would back Johnson.

The overall results among millennials highlight Trump’s weakness with younger voters, even compared to Mitt Romney four years ago, in addition to the increasing diversity of younger Americans.

Clinton leads Trump with all millennials, 46 percent to 24 percent, with Johnson taking 22 percent. Among white millennials, Clinton’s lead shrinks, 36 percent to 32 percent, with Johnson winning a quarter of the vote.

Mitt Romney lost voters younger than 30 nationally by a wide margin: 60 percent to 36 percent, according to exit polls. But he actually won young white voters, 51 percent to 44 percent.

Nonwhites make up nearly half of the young electorate — almost twice their representation in the pool of voters 30 and older.





A week after House Democrats staged a protest in the well of the chamber demanding votes on stricter gun legislation, a Quinnipiac University poll showed many of those proposals continue to earn overwhelming support.

More than nine-in-10 voters told pollsters they support requiring background checks for all gun buyers. Eighty-six percent support banning people on the terrorist watch list from purchasing guns. A smaller percentage, 59 percent, support a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons.

Despite congressional Republicans’ staunch opposition to many of those measures, solid numbers of rank-and-file Republicans told pollsters they support them. Ninety percent of Republicans support requiring background checks, 85 percent support prohibiting those on the terrorist watch list from buying guns and 40 percent favor an assault-weapons ban.

There’s less support on more existential questions about gun laws. When voters were asked simply if they support or oppose stricter gun laws, 54 percent said they supported those measures, compared to 42 percent who opposed them. Partisanship was a key divide: 83 percent of Democrats support stricter gun laws, but 69 percent of Republicans oppose them.

And the gender gap was evident, too: Support for stricter gun laws was significantly higher among female voters (63 percent) than men (45 percent).





California is still counting its ballots from last month’s primaries, and Clinton’s lead over Bernie Sanders remains solid, even as Sanders is refusing to end his candidacy officially.

As of Friday night, Clinton led Sanders by a margin of 388,406 votes – about 7.7 percentage points, according to the California secretary of state’s office.

Clinton’s lead is larger than the number of outstanding ballots left to count as of Friday night: about 288,000. And while Sanders has narrowed Clinton’s advantage somewhat over the past few weeks as late mail ballots have been added to the tally, he’s still likely to finish well behind her in the final count.

Nick Gass contributed to this report.