Hillary Clinton made history last week when she became the first woman to represent a major political party as the presumptive Democratic nominee. Her good week got even better when President Obama and Sen. Elizabeth Warren formally endorsed her.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, received quite a bit of negative attention from inside his own party, including a few Republicans walking away from their previous endorsements of him.
Influence of the events of the past week is evident in the most recent NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll, which shows Clinton leading Trump by 7 points, 49 percent to 42 percent. The poll was conducted online June 6 through June 12 among 9,355 adults who say they are registered to vote.
Clinton’s gains over the past two weeks in the tracking poll are coming from increases in support among moderates, men and white voters. She narrowed Trump’s margin among men and white voters from double digits in last week’s poll to single digits this week. Clinton picked up 7 points among moderate voters this week and now leads Trump 58 percent to 33 percent among them.
Trump’s margin among male voters dropped from 14 points last week to 9 points this week and he now leads Clinton 51 percent to 42 percent. His 13-point margin among white voters last week also shrank to 9 points this week. White voters now favor Trump to Clinton 50 percent to 41 percent.
As the weekly election tracking poll continues to explore the effects of third-party options on horserace results, respondents were asked multiple variations of the vote choice question. Similar to last week’s question variations, this week’s tracking poll randomly asked some respondents a four-way horserace question and other respondents a two-way horserace question.
The four-way horserace question — in addition to asking about Clinton and Trump — also listed Gary Johnson (the Libertarian candidate) and Jill Stein (the Green Party candidate) as additional third party options. The results from this question also show Clinton gaining on Trump. She now enjoys 42 percent support; Trump has 38 percent, Johnson has 9 percent support and Stein has 5 percent. Support for Johnson and Stein remained consistent from last week’s results — but Clinton now leads Trump by 4 points. In last week’s four-way horserace results, Clinton trailed Trump by a single point — 39 percent to 40 percent.
The clear results from the two different questions demonstrate that Clinton gained on Trump from last week’s results to this week’s results.
A majority of voters also think that Clinton will win the 2016 presidential election against Trump — 54 percent said Clinton will win, and 40 percent said Trump will win. The 14-point margin is up from only a 5-point margin last week.
These results indicate that Clinton appears to be gaining ground in a match-up against Trump and that most voters think she will win in November. Given the potential political implications of the recent events in Orlando, results over the coming weeks could shift significantly.
The NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking poll was conducted online June 6 through June 12, 2016 among a national sample of 10,604 adults aged 18 and over, including 9,355 who say they are registered to vote. Respondents for this non-probability survey were selected from the nearly three million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day. Results have an error estimate of plus or minus 1.4 percentage points. For full results and methodology for this weekly tracking poll, please click here.