White House Watch: Clinton 43%, Trump 39%, Johnson 9%, Stein 2%

The seesaw battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump finds the Democratic nominee back in the lead.

The latest Rasmussen Reports weekly White House Watch national telephone and online survey shows Clinton with 43% support to Donald Trump’s 39%. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson gets nine percent (9%) of the vote, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein earns two percent (2%). Another two percent (2%) like some other candidate, and five percent (5%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Last week, Trump edged ahead of Clinton 40% to 39%. It was the first time he had been in the lead since mid-July. The latest finding is Clinton’s best showing in a month, but the race remains a close one, within or just outside our survey’s +/- 3 margin of error for months.

Clinton earns 78% support among Democratic voters, while 75% of Republicans favor Trump. The two are basically tied among voters not affiliated with either major party, a group Trump has led in for the past several weeks.

Johnson has the support of eight percent (8%) of Republicans, seven percent (7%) of Democrats and 13% of unaffiliateds. Green has no statistical support among GOP voters but wins the backing of one percent (1%) of Democrats and four percent (4%) of unaffiliated voters.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on September 6-7, 2016 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

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Trump’s trust advantage over Clinton in the areas of the economy and immigration has all but vanished, although independent voters continue to express a lot more faith in the GOP nominee.

Voters in general tend to think Trump would do a better job protecting them from terrorists. 

Trump maintains a slight edge among men, while Clinton leads by 10 points among women.

Those under 40 remain Clinton’s strongest age cohort. Older voters prefer Trump.

Much has been made in the media in recent days about Trump’s outreach to blacks, and he now earns 19% support among these voters. Sixty-three percent (63%) still favor Clinton. The Democratic nominee also has a better than two-to-one lead among other minority voters. Trump leads by 10 among whites.

Most voters continue to believe the U.S. military should only be used when America’s national security is at stake and think it’s being overused right now. Trump voters are more emphatic about this than Clinton supporters are.

Trump also continues to insist that Mexico will pay for the wall he proposes to build along the U.S.-Mexico border to help stop illegal immigration. By a 50% to 34% margin, Americans believe Mexico should be asked to compensate U.S. taxpayers to offset some of the costs to this country of illegal immigration.

Republicans are asking questions about Clinton's health, while Democrats insist that Trump release his tax returns. Most voters still believe major White House hopefuls should make public recent tax returns, but now most also think they should release their medical records, too. 

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

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