David Wright
CNN
WASHINGTON — (CNN) Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump in four crucial swing states, according to a new poll out Friday, good news for the Clinton campaign that has seen other surveys show the presidential race tightening in recent weeks.
The NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll finds Clinton with high single-digit leads in Colorado, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. Clinton maintains these leads, though at slightly smaller margins, when third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are included.
Clinton leads Trump in Colorado 43% to 35%. Johnson performs best in this state — he garners 12% support when included in the poll, which shrinks Clinton and Trump’s support to 39% and 33%, respectively.
In Florida, Clinton also paces Trump, 44% to 37%. Clinton’s lead slips to 5 points with third party candidates factored in.
Clinton is ahead of Trump in North Carolina 44% to 38%, a state which President Barack Obama won for Democrats in 2008 for the first time since 1976. It reverted red in 2012, but polling has shown Clinton competitive there, drawing significant support from minority communities.
Finally, Clinton leads Trump comfortably in Virginia, 44% to 35%. Johnson performs well here too — Clinton leads Trump 41% to 34% when he’s included, and he draws 10%.
A Quinnipiac poll of other battleground states released earlier this week — Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Iowa — showed closer races, with Trump leading or tied with Clinton. In Florida, Quinnipiac found Trump up 3 percentage points to Clinton, 42%-39%. Both surveys found about one in five voters in Florida are undecided or don’t support either Trump or Clinton.
The WSJ/NBC/Marist findings in Virginia and Colorado findings are in line with other recent polls in those states.
In the WSJ/NBC Marist surveys, both candidates are slowed by steadfastly high unfavorable ratings, with significant majorities in all four states saying they have negative views of Clinton and Trump. And in each state, more than one in 10 say they won’t vote for either, or prefer a third party candidate.
The poll also suggests that Trump still faces difficulty unifying the Republican Party after the contentious primary campaign, as he gets no more than 79% of the Republican vote in all four swing states polled.
Additionally, the poll found that gender and educational divides continue to shape the 2016 race, with lower-educated male voters favoring Trump, and more highly educated female voters favoring Clinton.
The WSJ/NBC/Marist poll was conducted from July 5 through 10, and surveyed 871 registered voters in Florida; 907 in North Carolina; 876 in Virginia; and 794 in Colorado. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.3 points in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia, and 3.5 points for Colorado.
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