White House Watch

White House Watch: Clinton 42%, Trump 38%, Johnson 9%, Stein 2%

The e-mail scandal and new accusations about the Clinton Foundation may be bedeviling Hillary Clinton, but Donald Trump appears unable to capitalize on them.

The latest weekly Rasmussen Reports White House Watch shows Trump losing ground: Clinton now holds a 42% to 38% lead among Likely U.S. Voters, up slightly from the 41% to 39% advantage she held a week ago.

In the latest survey, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson again captures nine percent (9%) of the vote, while Green Party candidate Jill Stein picks up two percent (2%) support. Three percent (3%) like some other candidate, and seven percent (7%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Trump’s support remains in the 30s for the second week in a row, down from a high of 44% in mid-July. Support for Clinton has remained in the narrow 41% to 44% range for the last six weeks.

Clinton has 79% of the Democratic vote, while 76% of Republicans support Trump. The GOP nominee continues to hold a small lead among voters not affiliated with either major political party. Johnson draws nearly equally from both major parties and earns 20% of the unaffiliated vote.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on August 23-24, 2016 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

[Rasmussen Reports analysts Amy Holmes and Fran Coombs are available for interested media. Please call 732-776-9777 ext. 205 for interviews.]

Clinton hasn’t had a formal press conference since late last year, largely avoiding media questions for the entire primary season. Trump’s routine press conferences often seem to do him more harm than good. But 82% of voters think it is important for the major presidential candidates to hold regular press conferences to answer questions from reporters.

Trump and Clinton are now virtually tied among male voters, while Clinton holds a nine-point advantage among women.

The Democrat leads by 15 points among those under 40, while the two are tied among older voters.

Whites still prefer Trump, while Clinton has an enormous lead among blacks and a double-digit advantage among other minority voters.

Most voters support Trump’s plan for temporarily restricting immigration from countries with a history of terrorism and for testing to screen out newcomers who don’t share America’s values.

Trump says he would put an end to “nation building," a term that in recent years has been used to describe stepped-up efforts to establish democracies in the Middle East by use of the U.S. military and U.S. taxpayer dollars. Few voters believe the government's nation-building efforts have been a success, and most agree with Trump that they should be ended.

Clinton, after long supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), has now joined Trump in rejecting the free trade agreement between the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries. Few voters have a favorable opinion of the TPP, but Republicans and unaffiliateds are more critical of it than Democrats are.

Americans remain skeptical of so-called “free trade,” and most believe the U.S. government doesn’t do enough to protect businesses here from overseas competition.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

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