Poll: Clinton vs. Trump Is a Dead Heat in Pennsylvania

Trump photo by Michael Vadon, used under a Creative Commons license

A new poll released by Quinnipiac University shows Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in a dead heat in Pennsylvania.

Clinton leads the poll of 1,077 self-identified registered voters, 43 percent to 42 percent, with 2 percent saying someone else, 7 percent saying they wouldn’t vote and 5 percent undecided. The poll has a margin of sampling error of +/- 3 percentage points.

All of Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination have dropped out of the race; he is the presumptive Republican nominee. Bernie Sanders, who held a rally in Atlantic City yesterday, has vowed to stay in until the end of the Democratic presidential primaries. But Clinton is way out in front and will most likely win her party’s nomination. Clinton vs. Trump is the most likely general election matchup.

The close race is due entirely to a gender split. Clinton leads among women, 51-32 percent, but Trump is far ahead among men: 54-33 percent. Neither candidate is well liked by the electorate sampled in the poll: Clinton’s unfavorable-favorable rating is 58-37, while Trump’s is 55-39.

Troubling for Clinton is this poll question: Trump has a 51-42 edge among Pennsylvania voters on the issue of the economy. Fifty-eight percent of people in the poll rated the state’s economy as “poor” (14 percent) or “not so good” (44 percent) in the sampling. Trump also edged Clinton, 47-46 percent, on which candidate would do a better job “handling terrorism.”

Trump is rated as more trustworthy than Clinton among the state’s voters, though neither was very trusted. Trump was rated as untrustworthy by a 55-39 margin, but that was still better than Clinton’s 67-30 percent untrustworthy-trustworthy rating.

Clinton did do better in the “who would handle an international incident better” question, though. Fifty-five percent of those surveyed said she had the “right kind of temperament and personality” to handle such an incident, while only 33 percent answered the same for Trump. Clinton also bested Trump on who has higher moral standards, with 48 percent saying she did versus 39 percent for Trump.

In a hypothetical matchup between Sanders and Trump, however, the former casino mogul falls behind in Pennsylvania. Sanders wins that battle, 47-41 percent.

Among other questions asked by the pollsters, 58 percent of Pennsylvania voters supported undocumented immigrants being able to stay in the United States and apply for citizenship. Only 27 percent said they should be deported. Pennsylvanians oppose a wall between the United States and Mexico by a 51 percent to 45 percent margin, with 4 percent undecided.

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