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Election Polls For Trump And Clinton: Latest Presidential Polls Show An After-Debate Bump Increased Hillary Clinton’s Lead Over Donald Trump

By Daniel Ketchum
Published on: 09:50 PST, Sep 30, 2016

The latest presidential election polls show a clear after-debate bump for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, placing her significantly ahead of Donald Trump. While Trump and Clinton were close to being tied just prior to the first presidential debate, the current Rasmussen poll and several state polls all show Clinton pulling ahead.

Opinion polls following Trump and Clinton’s debate on Monday make it clear that the vast majority of viewers – and even many Republicans – believe that Hillary Clinton won the debate. Not surprisingly, this outcome could have a big impact on Donald Trump’s prospects in the upcoming election.

The official election polls taken in the immediate aftermath of the debate aren’t necessarily useful since many polls are conducted over a period of three or four days. This means most polls that came out on Tuesday or Wednesday either didn’t wait this long or began before the first presidential debate even took place.

For example, the Reuters/Ipsos election polls released just prior to the debate showed Donald Trump with a two-point lead in a four-person race and a tie with Hillary Clinton in a two-person race. But the poll they released on Wednesday, September 28 following the first debate showed Hillary Clinton leading by six points in a two-person race and four points in a four-person race.

This is certainly encouraging for Clinton, but since the debate took place on September 26 and the Reuters poll was taken between September 22 and September 26, this poll doesn’t even measure the after-debate bump at all. So the impact of Hillary Clinton’s win on the election polls may be even greater than this.

Of course, the online election polling done by news outlets and other organizations are almost useless. Given that anyone can respond and can set up fake accounts to click as many times as they like, these election polls are more useful for campaign spin doctoring than they are for really telling you who’s ahead.

Certainly, in the wake of Donald Trump’s disastrous performance in the first presidential debate, the Trump campaign leaned very heavily on these questionable online polls to support their contention that Trump won the debate – regardless of any evidence to the contrary. Unfortunately for them, the real story is starting to come out, and it doesn’t look good for Trump.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump gestures during the Presidential Debate. [Image by Win McNamee/Getty Images]

Yesterday, Rasmussen Reports released a national poll showing that Hillary Clinton beats Donald Trump by one point in a four-person race. On its own, this may not sound like much, but only one week before – on September 22 – Rasmussen reports election polls showed Donald Trump winning a four-person race by six points.

So in the space of one week, Hillary Clinton has gained seven points in the Rasmussen election poll. And since this organization did their polling on September 26 through September 28, it can be viewed as accurately representing an after debate bump in Hillary Clinton’s numbers over Donald Trump.

But that’s not all. State level presidential election polls released on Friday show even better news for the Clinton campaign. The Mason-Dixon presidential election poll for Florida has Clinton four points ahead in a four-person race, whereas older polls there had Trump pulling ahead in Florida. Even the Fox News poll now has Hillary Clinton one point up in Florida.

A similar poll carried out by Mason-Dixon in Florida in late August showed Donald Trump leading by four points. This means that in the space of one month, Clinton has shifted eight points. It’s the same story in all the other state polls released today. According to USA Today, Clinton is leading seven points in New Hampshire, seven points in Michigan, and six points in Nevada.

It’s fairly clear that after Hillary Clinton won the first presidential debate, she received a very significant after-debate bump in her poll numbers. Unless Donald Trump can perform much better in the second debate than he did in the first, things might continue to trend in Hillary Clinton’s direction in the election polls. In fact, the Hillary Clinton landslide that everyone was predicting not long ago might again start looking like a possibility.

[Feature Image by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]

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