Clinton leads Trump by 12 in new national poll

The most recent struggles of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has ballooned Hillary Clinton’s lead over the GOP nominee to 12 percentage points among likely voters in a new poll, up 8 points from a similar survey conducted just three weeks ago.

The Monmouth University poll released Monday afternoon puts Clinton ahead of Trump, 50 percent to 38 percent, in a four-way race that also includes Libertarian Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein. The former secretary of state’s lead is up significantly from the 4-point advantage she held in a Monmouth poll last month.


The intervening three weeks between the Monmouth polls have been nothing short of a disaster for Trump, whose numbers have slid dramatically nationwide and in swing states as his campaign entered its homestretch. Those struggles began at the first presidential debate, widely perceived as a victory for Clinton, where the Democratic nominee successfully baited Trump on a number of issues. Perhaps most successfully, Clinton brought former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, whom Trump once derided as “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping,” into the political spotlight, an attack that put the real estate mogul on the defensive for nearly a full week.

Then, just before the second presidential debate, The Washington Post published audio from 2005 of Trump describing in vulgar terms how his celebrity status allowed him to sexually assault women with impunity. He denied at the second debate that he had ever actually carried out such actions, but numerous women came forward in the subsequent days alleging that Trump had made unwanted sexual advances on them. The GOP nominee has denied all of the charges.

The poll released Monday is the first to be conducted entirely since the accusations of sexual assault against Trump began to emerge. Sixty-two percent of voters polled said they believe the allegations against Trump are credible while 58 percent said they were not surprised by what they heard Trump say on the recording.

Clinton’s favorability rating remained poor but steady relative to the previous poll, with just 38 percent of voters holding a favorable opinion of her and 52 percent holding an unfavorable opinion. The number of respondents with a favorable opinion of Trump dipped 6 points, from 32 percent to 26 percent, while his unfavorable numbers climber 4 points, from 57 percent to 61 percent.

Disclosures by WikiLeaks of internal emails hacked from the personal account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta appear to be having little effect on voters’ impression of the former secretary of state. Among those disclosures was text of Clinton’s paid speeches, but just 25 percent of respondents said that the release of those transcripts made them think less of the Democratic nominee. Forty-five percent said the transcripts had no impact on their impression of Clinton and 28 percent said they did not know about the hacked emails.

The Monmouth University poll was conducted from Oct. 14-16, reaching 805 registered voters nationwide via telephone with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.5 percent. Of the 805 registered voters reached, 726 were determined to be likely to vote in November’s election, with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.6 percent.