Donald Trump Moves Ahead Of Hillary Clinton In New Polls

Donald Trump has supposedly surged ahead of rival Hillary Clinton in a series of new national presidential preference opinion polls.

The GOP presidential nominee appears to be benefiting from a so-called bump from the positive viewership reaction to his acceptance speech Thursday night, July 21, at the RNC convention in Cleveland, despite the fact that most media networks insisted that its tone was dark.

Today is the first day of the Democratic nominating convention in Philadelphia, an event that has become engulfed in controversy and unrest over the WikiLeaks #DNCLeaks email dump that suggests that the party attempted to sabotage the insurgent campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in an effort to enable Hillary Clinton to win the nomination.

Given the favorable Trump polls, “some Democratic delegates at the convention in Philadelphia said they are ‘terrified’ and that the party needs to ‘do some serious thinking,'” BuzzFeed reported.

Moreover, according to Nate Silver of the FiveThirtyEight blog, a pundit for which the media has high regard, if the election were held today, Donald Trump would be elected president of the United States, with a 57.5 percent chance of victory. Silver was one of many political prognosticators insisting that Trump had no likelihood of being competitive for the nomination, let alone the presidency itself.

The VP selection of low-key Indiana Governor Mike Pence seems to also have stabilized the Trump campaign to some degree.

In the clip below, the Sanders cohort today expressed displeasure when Bernie stressed the importance of electing Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine.

The crowd reacts to @BernieSanders saying: "We have got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine" pic.twitter.com/7v3puhTdLM

— POLITICO (@politico) July 25, 2016

In a CNN/ORC survey, Trump leads Clinton 44 percent to 39 percent even when Jill Stein and Gary Johnson of the Green Party and Libertarian Party, respectively, are in the mix. “The new findings mark Trump’s best showing in a CNN/ORC Poll against Clinton since September 2015.” The poll was derived from a random telephone sample of about 1,000 adults during the July 22-24 time period.

A Morning Consult poll conducted from July 22 to July 24 with about 2,500 registered voters gives Trump a four-point edge over Clinton, a two-point increase from the prior week. “Trump has been on a positive trend since the Department of Justice determined that there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute Clinton for her use of a private email server for official business while serving in the Obama administration.”

Based on a telephone poll of about 1,300 registered voters, CBS claims that Trump and Clinton are tied at 41 percent nationally and that “including voters who lean toward a candidate, Trump has a one-point advantage.” CBS separately indicated that Trump has pulled ahead in battleground or swing states (such as Ohio) by 42 percent to 41 percent, a two-percent increase.

Suffolk University previously released a poll that predated the New York real estate mogul’s acceptance speech showing Trump and Clinton tied in Ohio, with each garnering 44 percent of the vote, and with 11 percent undecided.

Filmmaker and Trump foe Michael Moore has already predicted victory for the billionaire first-time candidate because of his hold on the Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

Data collected by the Los Angles Times from about 3,000 respondents currently puts the up-trending Donald Trump ahead by 45 percent to 41 percent for Hillary Clinton.

It’s worth mentioning that pollsters have been way off in some recent elections, such as Brexit in the U.K., so as the cliché goes, the only poll that matters is on Election Day in November. Information consumers should also be aware that some polling firms have an ideological and/or financial stake in adjusting methodology to arrive at a particular outcome. Moreover, likely voters rather than registered voters traditionally have been considered a more reliable benchmark.

In addition, since the presidency is won or lost on a state-by-state basis toward 270 electoral votes, national polling results may be less significant at this stage of the campaign.

#MakeAmericaGreatAgain https://t.co/EXsoUOsEP4 pic.twitter.com/3ji7a14GSw

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2016

It is also an open question as to whether in the current highly politicized/polarized environment, a voter would share his or her true feelings with a stranger on the telephone, to a “machine” of some kind, or even (to a lesser extent) via the internet.

Pro-Trump websites such as Gateway Pundit and Zero Hedge and others have long maintained that some polling data is skewed in Hillary Clinton’s favor by oversampling Democrats. If their contention has any validity, it’s possible that Trump might be farther ahead that mainstream outlets are acknowledging. The political landscape seemingly changes by the hour, if not with each news cycle, especially given Trump’s freewheeling rhetoric, so it remains to be seen who will emerge victorious on November 8, 2016, Election Day in the U.S.

CNN also noted in its poll findings that the Donald Trump non-endorsement by Ted Cruz appears to have been a non-starter for the Texas Senator. “While 60% of Republican voters had a positive impression of the former presidential candidate before the convention, just 33% have one now.”

[Photo by Evan Vucci/AP Images]