Exit Poll: Americans cast ballots while holding their noses
Americans held their noses as they picked a new president on Tuesday: More than half of voters cast their ballots with reservations about their candidate or because they disliked the others running. That was true both for those backing Democrat Hillary Clinton and those supporting Republican Donald Trump, according to preliminary results of exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research. After a long, hard-fought campaign, just 4 out of 10 voters strongly favored their candidate. That’s a shift from 2012, when about two-thirds of voters said they were voting because they strongly favored their candidate. Other findings from the exit poll: WOMEN’S ISSUES VS. EMAIL ISSUES After all of the sound and fury over Trump’s treatment of women, it turned out the issue bothered half of all voters a lot – and women were more concerned about it than men. About 6 in 10 women were bothered a lot, compared to about 4 in 10 men, the exit poll found. The partisan divide on the issue was stark: More than 8 in 10 Clinton voters were bothered a lot by the GOP candidate’s treatment of women, compared to about 1 in 10 Trump voters. It turned out voters were somewhat less concerned about Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state. That issue mattered a lot to about four in 10 voters, including about 9 in 10 Trump voters. Less than 1 in 10 Clinton’s supporters were bothered a lot. Older voters were more inclined to say they were bothered by Clinton’s email issue: About half of voters age 50 and older were bothered a lot, compared with about 4 in 10 younger voters. TO BE HONEST … Neither Trump nor Clinton gets bragging rights when it comes to honesty. About 6 out of 10 voters said they don’t view Clinton as honest and about the same share felt the same way about Trump. Does anyone think both of these candidates are honest? That number was in single digits. Opinions were more mixed on the question of temperament. More than half of Americans said Clinton had the temperament to be president and about a third felt the same about Trump. ABOUT THAT WALL After all the talk during the campaign about immigration, it turned out to be a low priority for most voters: Just 1 in 10 voters said immigration was the most important issue facing the country. As for Trump’s plan to build a “big, beautiful” wall, more than half of voters opposed the idea. Further, 7 in 10 Americans thought immigrants now in the country illegally should be allowed to stay, and just a quarter thought they should be deported. That despite Trump’s tough talk about removing those who are in the country illegally. Immigration was the top issue for about a fifth of Trump voters and less than 1 in 10 Clinton voters. Twenty percent of Hispanics chose immigration as the top issue. Only about 10 percent of other voters picked it as the No. 1 issue. The economy was the top issue for both Trump and Clinton supporters. SOUTHERN SNAPSHOTS In two tightly fought Southern states, vast divides by race, gender and education kept the presidential race close shortly after polls closed. In both Georgia and Virginia, about 9 in 10 black voters and two-thirds of Hispanics backed Clinton, while most whites backed Trump, according to the exit polls. In Georgia, large majorities of whites with and without college degrees backed Trump. In Virginia, those two groups diverged: Whites without a college degree backed Trump by a large margin, while those with a degree split their votes between Trump and Clinton. Women in both states were far more likely than men to back Clinton. Majorities of women in both states said Trump’s treatment of women bothered them a lot. SPLIT VIEWS ON ACCURACY OF VOTE COUNT After all of Trump’s talk about a “rigged” election, most Americans went to the polls with at least a moderate amount of confidence that their votes would be counted accurately. Those who cast ballots for Clinton were far more likely to feel very confident about the accuracy of the vote: About 7 in 10 Clinton voters felt very confident in the count, compared with about 3 in 10 Trump voters. Overall, about half of voters felt very confident in the vote count, and a third were somewhat confident. Less than 2 in 10 said they weren’t very confident or were not at all confident in the vote count. In 2004 and 2008, voters were only slightly more certain about the accuracy of the vote count. About half of voters were very confident in the count, and 4 in 10 were somewhat confident. — The survey was conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research with 15,445 voters as they left their polling places at 350 randomly selected sites throughout the United States supplemented by 4,404 telephone interviews with mail, early and absentee voters. The results among all those voting have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
College-educated whites put hole in Donald Trump coalition
Wanda Melton has voted for every Republican presidential nominee since Ronald Reagan in 1980, but now the Georgia grandmother plans to cross over to support Democrat Hillary Clinton. “I’m not a real fan of Hillary,” Melton says from her office in Atlanta. “But I think it would just be awful to have Donald Trump.” She adds: “I cannot in good conscience let that happen.” Melton is among a particular group of voters, whites with college degrees, who are resistant to Trump. Their skepticism comes as an ominous warning as Trump struggles to rebuild even the losing coalition that Mitt Romney managed four years ago. College-educated whites made up more than one-third of the electorate in 2012. Polls suggest Trump trails Clinton with those voters, especially women. “Donald Trump simply cannot afford to lose ground in any segment of the electorate” that supported Romney, said Florida pollster Fernand Amandi. Romney’s strength with that group, for example, made for a close race in Florida, where President Barack Obama won by less than 75,000 votes out of more than 8.4 million cast. Some Republicans worry Trump’s approach — his unvarnished, sometimes uncouth demeanor and his nationalist and populist arguments — guarantees his defeat, because the same outsider appeal that attracts many working class and even college-educated white men alienates other voters with a college degree. Ann Robinson, 64, is a lifelong Republican in a Trump’s home state of New York, a Democratic stronghold that the real estate tycoon cites as an example of where he can “expand the map.” Robinson sneers at the proposition and says she’ll vote for Clinton. “It’s just not a reasonable movement,” she says of Trump’s populist pitch. “I’m not sure he can actually be their savior. She has so much more experience. Trump has nothing.” Mary Darling, 59, is an Illinois Republican who said she won’t vote for Trump or Clinton. “If they could just soften his edges, people would flock to him, but that’s just not going to happen,” she said. Lew Oliver, chairman of the Orange County Republican Party in Florida, says he’s prepared for an uphill fight in no small part because of Trump’s struggle among more educated voters. “The fundamentals aren’t in our favor, and some of his comments aren’t helping,” Oliver said. Romney drew support from 56 percent of white voters with college degrees, according to 2012 exit polls. Obama notched just 42 percent, but still cruised to a second term. A Washington Post-ABC News poll taken in June found Clinton leading Trump among college-educated whites 50 percent to 42 percent. Polling from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center pointed to particularly stark numbers among white women with at least a bachelor’s degree. At this point in 2008 and 2012, that group of voters was almost evenly divided between Obama and the Republican nominee. This June, Pew found Clinton with a 62-31 advantage. Conversely, Pew found Trump still leads, albeit by a slightly narrower margin than did Romney at this point, among white women with less than a bachelor’s degree. Should Trump fail to even replicate Romney’s coalition, he has little hope of flipping many of the most contested states that Obama won twice, particularly Florida, Colorado and Virginia. Trump’s struggles among college whites have Democrats eyeing North Carolina, which Obama won in 2008 before it reverted back to Republicans, and even GOP-leaning Arizona and Georgia. The education gap for Trump isn’t new. Exit polls in the Republican primaries found him faring better among less educated groups. Trump particularly struggled with better-educated Republicans when Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., was in the presidential race. Republican pollster Greg Strimple of Idaho says the gap is understandable. Voters without a college education, he said, are more likely to be struggling financially, to feel alienated from the political class Trump rails against and to find solace in his promise to stop illegal immigration. College educated voters “may have had relatively stagnant incomes, but they can still look at their 401(k)s and think about the future,” Strimple said. “They’re free to care more about things like tone.” Clinton’s campaign sees the persuadable portion of the electorate as being made up largely of women, many with college degrees. It has tried to reach them by hammering Trump as “dangerous” and “temperamentally unfit” for the job, while her initial general election advertising blitz focuses on her achievements in public life. Strimple said Trump must counter that with a constant “indictment of the last eight years, an indictment of Hillary Clinton. That can get some of those voters back.” The question for Trump, though, is how many Wanda Meltons are already lost. “He’s just not in control of himself,” she says. “That personality type is not suited either to leadership or protecting the country.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
