Poll: Clinton tightens grip on Pennsylvania base

Hillary Clinton holds an 8 percentage point lead over Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, according to the results of the latest Monmouth University poll of likely voters out Tuesday, which also shows Democratic Senate candidate Katie McGinty eking out a narrow advantage over Republican incumbent Pat Toomey.

Buoyed by strong support from non-whites and voters in the Philadelphia area, Clinton is shown leading the Republican nominee 48 percent to 40 percent in a four-way race including Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, who received 6 percent, and Green Party nominee Jill Stein, who earned 1 percent. Four 4 percent said they are undecided among those candidates.

Clinton’s level of support in the four-way matchup is roughly the same as the 9-point lead she had in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll conducted in early August. Overall, Clinton holds a 10-point advantage of 48.8 percent to 38.8 percent in the POLITICO Battleground States Polling Average of tracking polls in the field back to late July.

Independents are generally split in the latest Monmouth survey, with 39 percent going for Trump and 36 percent for Clinton. Seventeen percent of independents in Pennsylvania said they would vote for Johnson, while 2 percent backed Stein.

Among black, Hispanic and Asian voters, Clinton leads Trump by 85 points — 90 percent to 5 percent. Trump leads by a margin of 9 points — 48 percent to 39 percent — among white voters. President Barack Obama won the non-white vote by 71 points in 2012, while Mitt Romney prevailed by 15 points among white voters.

Trump holds a substantial 18-point lead among white men (50 percent to 32 percent) but ties with Clinton among white women, taking 45 percent to her 46 percent. The Manhattan businessman is behind by 10 points among college-educated white voters, a voting bloc that Romney won by 15 points in 2012. Trump leads by 25 points (57 percent to 32 percent) among whites without a college degree, a group Romney won by 13 points in 2012.

And while Trump leads Clinton by 30 points in the less populous northeast and central areas of the state, the Democratic nominee leads by 33 points in the seven congressional districts in and around Philadelphia, the state’s largest metropolitan area.

While Clinton is maintaining a significant advantage in the battleground state’s presidential race, Democratic Senate candidate Katie McGinty leads incumbent Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, 45 percent to 41 percent, within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.

The poll was conducted via landlines and cellphones from Aug. 26 to 29, surveying 402 likely voters, majorities of whom expressed unfavorable opinions of both Trump and Clinton.