Hillary Clinton. | AP Photo/Tony Dejak Poll: Trump’s judge comments help Clinton to 8-point lead in Florida

Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 8 percentage points in must-win Florida, where a new presidential poll shows that nearly six in 10 voters say Trump's comments about a judge’s Mexican heritage are racist.

Clinton’s 47 percent to 39 percent lead over Trump in the latest Quinnipiac University Florida poll represents a net 7 percentage point shift in the Democrat’s favor since last month, when the same pollster found the two were essentially tied, at 43 percent to 42 percent.


Quinnipiac polled 975 Florida voters as part of its swing state survey that included voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania. In those two states, Trump and Clinton are virtually tied as the race has remained essentially unchanged since May.

Voters in all three states reacted negatively to Trump’s statements that an Indiana-born judge was a “Mexican” who should recuse himself from presiding over a Trump University civil fraud trial. In Florida and Pennsylvania, 58 percent said the comments sounded racist and in Ohio 59 percent viewed it that way. The judge's parents were born in Mexico.

Florida “is Hillary Clinton’s best state and perhaps Donald Trump’s toughest lift,” said Peter A. Brown, Quinnipiac’s assistant polling director. “One reason might be Florida has a larger Hispanic population than the other two states, and Trump has clashed with Hispanic leaders over some of his remarks.”

About 15 percent of Florida’s registered voters list themselves as Hispanic, while Latinos are barely a factor in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

In poll after poll, Hispanic voters in Florida and the nation have strongly disfavored Trump, said Fernand Amandi, a Democrat and pollster for Miami-based Bendixen & Amandi International. Even though Florida has a relatively small population of Mexican-American voters — especially compared to those of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent — Trump’s demonizing of illegal immigrants and the judge in his case have had a notable effect on the overall Hispanic population.

“Hispanics recognize that an attack on Mexicans is an attack on them,” Amandi said. “If it’s Mexicans today, it could be Puerto Ricans tomorrow and Venezuelans next and Colombians the day after.”

When Amandi polled Florida Hispanics last month in an unrelated survey, he found Trump winning Cuban-Americans 41 percent to 29 percent, but Amandi said a Republican candidate should ideally receive 55 percent support or more from this conservative-leaning segment of Florida’s Latino population.

If Trump loses Hispanic voters badly and does not significantly win non-Hispanic white votes by an historic margin, his chances of carrying Florida are relatively slim. And if Clinton wins Florida’s 29 Electoral College votes as well as the reliably blue states of New York (29 votes) and California (55), it gives her more than 41 percent of the total needed to win the White House — a daunting advantage.

Trump doesn’t just have a Latino problem in Quinnipiac’s poll. His advantage among men in Florida fell from a 13-point margin last month to a 4 percentage point margin now. Meanwhile, Clinton’s lead among women grew from 13 points to 18 points.

Both candidates have consolidated their bases but Clinton has more support among Democrats (whom she carries by a 91-point margin) when compared to Trump’s support among Republicans (whom he carries by a 74-point margin). Clinton also leads Trump by 44 percent to 35 percent among self-described independents.

Neither candidate is well-liked. According to the Quinnipiac poll, Clinton is viewed favorably by 39 percent of voters and Trump by 33 percent. Trump is viewed unfavorably by 61 percent of voters and Clinton by 53 percent.

By 50 percent to 43 percent, Florida voters said Clinton would do a better job handling immigration. Only 30 percent of Florida voters think Trump would succeed in building a border wall that Mexico would pay for; and just 17 percent believe Clinton would succeed in reining in the power of Wall Street, the poll found.

But Clinton is viewed as slightly less honest than Trump; 43 percent say he’s more trustworthy while 40 percent say that of her. Yet by a 47 percent to 36 percent margin, voters say she has higher moral standards than Trump.

By 49 percent to 41 percent, Florida voters favor Trump over Clinton when it comes to job creation. Florida voters in the poll favor Trump over Clinton by 48 percent to 42 percent when asked who would be more effective in fighting the ISIS terrorist group. But by a 54 percent to 39 percent margin, they say she would be better at managing a crisis and by 60 percent to 31 percent that she is better prepared to be president. Florida voters also think she’s smarter than Trump by 53 percent to 33 percent.

Asked whom they would rather have over for a barbecue, Florida voters want Trump over Clinton by 48 percent to 40 percent. But by 49 percent to 40 percent, they say they’d rather turn to Clinton during a personal crisis.

The poll, conducted from June 8-19, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.