This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on September 19, 2016 If you fo­cus on the na­tion­al pres­id­en­tial horse-race polls, Hil­lary Clin­ton has a sliv­er of a lead over Don­ald Trump—by nine-tenths of a point in the Real­Clear­Polit­ics.com av­er­age of ma­jor na­tion­al polls in the two-way tri­al heat, 44.9 to 44 per­cent; by sev­en-tenths of a point in the four-way heat, 41 to 40.3 per­cent, with Liber­tari­an Gary John­son third at 8.6 per­cent and Jill Stein, the Green Party can­did­ate, with 3.1 per­cent.

InsideGov | Graphiq

Ob­vi­ously the race will be de­cided by the Elect­or­al Col­lege, not a na­tion­al pop­u­lar vote. But as a gen­er­al rule, the vote per­cent­ages in the battle­ground states move in tan­dem with the na­tion­al num­bers. An ex­ample is the CBS News/YouGov Battle­ground Track­er on­line poll of 4,250 re­gistered voters in 11 swing states that has Clin­ton and Trump tied at 42 per­cent, John­son with 7 per­cent, and Stein with 2 per­cent. Polling in the swing states tends to lag be­hind the na­tion­al sur­veys. Good polls are re­leased in each state every week or so,

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