Despite a lot of angst over a huge dump of state election polls yesterday by IPSOS/Reuters which shows a lot of strange results, including leads by Hillary in red states that other pollsters don't show and only tiny leads in blue states where other polls show her leading by double digits, the latest Rasmussen tracking poll shows Hillary gaining on Trump over the past week.
Yesterday’s IPSOS/Reuters poll dump has a lot of progressives wetting their pants over concerns that the election might be tightening and that The Donald's latest flip-flop on immigration and deportation may be working (it's not a “pivot” if you toss aside everything you’ve said previously and make a 180 degree turn...that's a flip-flop, clear and simple).
Well, a new poll released by a Republican-leaning pollster shows that Hillary's lead has actually grown in the past week.
Last Thursday, Rasmussen’s weekly tracking poll had Hillary with a two percentage point lead over Trump. Granted, that is a much smaller lead than many other pollsters have shown, but still a lead from a Republican pollster whose numbers almost always are more favorable to Republicans than Democrats nonetheless.
Today, however, Rasmussen released a new weekly tracking poll that shows her lead has doubled in the past week, from two percent to four percent.
That doesn't exactly provide any corroborative evidence that Trump's flip-flopping has worked or that the race is tightening.
Rasmussen's most recent results show Hillary leading 42 percent to 38 percent for Trump, to nine percent for Libertarian Gary Johnson and two percent for Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Last Thursday, Rasmussen's weekly tracking poll had Hillary at 41 percent to 39 percent for Trump, Johnson at nine percent and three percent for Stein. That's a one percent increase for Hillary and a one percent decrease for Trump over the past week.
In fact, Rasmussen even states in today’s poll results that it appears that Trump is “losing ground.”
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2016/white_house_watch
Granted, we’re only talking a couple of percentage points, but the larger message here is that this pollster has not detected any significant move toward Trump, least of all any kind of evidence that Trump’s flip-flopping has done anything to dramatically change the race.
Rasmussen’s latest weekly tracking results are from polling conducted August 23-24 (yesterday and Tuesday).