WASHINGTON — New polls out Wednesday find tightening races between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in key battleground states.
NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls released Wednesday afternoon found Clinton and Trump virtually deadlocked in Iowa and Ohio.
Although the same news organizations found Clinton enjoying a 9-point lead in Pennsylvania, a Quinnipiac survey released Wednesday morning found a much closer race in the state, with the real estate mogul up 2 points, 43% to 41%, in the Keystone State.
Quinnipiac also found Trump and Clinton running neck-and-neck in Florida and Ohio as well. And a new survey of likely voters in Wisconsin by the Marquette University Law School found Clinton topping Trump by only 4 points, 45% to 41%, inside the poll’s margin of error.
The polls, which were conducted around the same time the Justice Department decided to not pursue criminal charges against Clinton for her use of a private email server while leading the State Department, show the issue is likely to keep dogging her campaign.
Quinnipiac’s Florida poll marks an 11-point difference from a month ago in the Sunshine State. Now, Trump edges Clinton 42% to 39%, within the margin of error; a month ago, Clinton led 47% to 39%. With third-party candidates included, Trump’s edge extends to five points, 41% to 36%.
In the two other states polled by Quinnipiac, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Clinton and Trump are in as tight a race as other pollsters have documented. They are tied at 41% each in Ohio, and it’s a 2-point contest in Pennsylvania, Trump 43% to Clinton’s 41%.
All of those leads are within the margins of error for each survey: 3.1 percentage points in Florida and Pennsylvania, and 3.2 percentage points in Ohio.
Much of the change in the Quinnipiac poll stems from a steep drop in Clinton’s support among non-whites in Florida compared with the last poll and a decline in support among men. The poll also showed a drop in voters’ perception of her character.
“While there is no definite link between Clinton’s drop in Florida and the U.S. Justice Department decision not to prosecute her for her handling of emails, she has lost ground to Trump on questions which measure moral standards and honesty,” said Peter Brown, who ran the Quinnipiac poll. That poll, which was conducted from June 30 to July 11, surveyed 1,015 voters in Florida, 955 in Ohio and 982 in Pennsylvania.
The NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls found Clinton narrowly ahead of Trump by three points among registered voters in Iowa, 42% to 39%, within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
The same polls found Clinton and Trump are tied in Ohio at 39% each, while the former secretary of state leads the presumptive Republican nominee 45% to 36% in Pennsylvania.
The NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls were conducted July 5-10 with 822 registered voters in Iowa, 848 registered voters in Ohio, and 829 registered voters in Pennsylvania. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points for each poll.
Good news for Clinton in Colorado, national poll
There was some positive news for Clinton in the swing state of Colorado, however. A Monmouth University poll released Wednesday afternoon found Clinton enjoying a 13-point lead among likely voters in Colorado.
Monmouth’s survey was conducted by telephone from July 9 to 12 with 404 Colorado residents and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9%. Marquette, meanwhile, polled 801 registered voters by telephone from July 7-10, with a margin of error of 4.1 percentage points.
The tight swing-state polls were reflected in a national survey also released Wednesday by McClatchy and Marist, which found Clinton leading Trump 42% to 39%.
In a four-way matchup including Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and likely Green Party nominee Jill Stein, Clinton’s edge over Trump grows to 5 points, 40% to 35%, as Johnson receives 10% and Stein gets 5%.
The McClatchy/Marist Poll was conducted by telephone July 5-9 among a random national sample of 1,249 adults, including 1,053 registered voters. Results among registered voters have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
