A new daily tracking poll conducted by the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles Times shows Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in a statistical dead head.
For the first week of the poll, Republican candidate Trump has 43 percent and Clinton 40 percent, a difference within the poll’s confidence interval of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
USC is relying on a panel 3,200 participants for its new Daybreak Poll. Every day, 450 different people are invited to participate, and each day at midnight, researchers update the results.
“Because it’s a daily poll, it will pick up almost instantaneously the effects of any event relating to the race — whether it’s a candidate’s announcement of a new running mate, a controversial incident or a policy proposal,” said Arie Kapteyn, director of the USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research
The poll shows the campaign is broadly divided by race, gender, age and education. Among men, Trump leads Clinton 47 percent to 36 percent. Among women, Clinton leads Trump 41 percent to 34 percent.
Eligible voters who have not graduated from college support Trump53 percent versus 24 percent for Clinton. However, Clinton draws 77 percent support from African Americans, versus Trump’s 3 percent. She also draws 51 percent from Latinos, versus 30 percent for Trump.
Among white college graduates, Clinton is at a slight advantage: 42 percent to Trump’s 40 percent.
Poll respondents lean in Trump’s favor but think he’s unlikely to win. Fifty-three percent believe Clinton will prevail, compared with 41 percent for Trump.
“It looks as though the news surrounding Hillary Clinton’s email controversy has had a pronounced impact on her level of support,” said Dan Schnur, director of USC’s Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics. “Donald Trump’s poll numbers have been largely unchanged over the last several weeks, but our poll shows that Clinton’s have taken a noticeable hit.”
