Damage Report: Clinton Email Scandal Fallout

From the latest set of Quinnipiac polls, it seems that the recent attention on Hillary Clinton’s email practices as secretary of state has taken a toll. The Department of Justice has dropped the case, but several of Mrs. Clinton’s statements were disputed by the F.B.I., which said she was “extremely careless” with classified information.

Specifically, surveys from Quinnipiac University show the two candidates statistically tied in the states going into their party conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia this month. Trump leads Clinton in Florida by a margin of 42 percent to 39 percent. In Pennsylvania, he is ahead, 43 percent to 41 percent. And in Ohio they are tied, with each having support of 41 percent of voters.

When Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party nominee, and Jill Stein, the Green Party’s candidate, are included in the polls, Trump does even better, leading Clinton by five points in Florida, six points in Pennsylvania and one point in Ohio. Johnson is expected to be on ballots in all 50 states.

The polls, which have margins of error of plus or minus three percentage points, show improvement for Trump in Pennsylvania and Florida, where he is starting to do better with women and independent voters while gaining more support among men. In June, Clinton held small leads over Trump in Florida and Pennsylvania and they were tied in Ohio.

Perhaps the most significant finding in the new poll is that Trump now leads among Independents in all three states:

Florida – Independent voters shifted from 44 – 35 percent for Clinton last month to 43 – 30 percent for Trump today;
Ohio – Trump leads 43 – 31 percent among Independent voters;
Pennsylvania – Trump leads 39 – 36 percent.

Nationally, Clinton still leads by 3 over Trump according to a McClatchy/Marist poll released today. That number goes to +5 when you include third party candidates. The RCP average has Clinton at 45.0 and Trump at 40.7

Arguably, it could have been worse. Maybe if Clinton hadn’t outspent Trump 15-to-1 over these past few weeks, it would have been a disaster.

Over at FiveThirtyEight’s General Election Forecast, Hillary Clinton’s victory chances have dropped to 68.7% (in the most pessimistic view). So, it’s still good, but not in the mid-seventies like it was a couple weeks ago.

Am I worried? Not yet.

A little.

A bit.

But we have some more poll results coming out today, VP picks coming up (Trump’s will be this week sometime), and the conventions. Plenty of time for more unforced Trump errors.

UPDATE: NBC/Marist polls are quite different for PA:

New NBCNews/Marist battleground polls: PA: Clinton 45 Trump 36; IA Clinton 42 Trump 39; Ohio Clinton 39 Trump 39

— Beth Fouhy (@bfouhy) July 13, 2016