On Tuesday, CNN/ORC released a new poll that could be game-changer for Donald Trump, if the poll isn’t just an outlier: it shows Trump up 45 percent to 43 percent over Hillary.
Now, obviously, if that held up, he’d be winning. But there’s something even more significant in this poll than prior polls showing him up slightly over Hillary: it shows him breaking what appeared to be his 41 percent ceiling. Trump had not broken 41 percent since one Monmouth poll in July (he was losing 45 to 43) and before that, since May. Trump’s biggest problem in this election cycle has been his inability to translate Hillary’s wild unpopularity into his own popularity – he’s been stuck in the polls, meaning that every time the polls narrow, it’s only because Hillary has been unable to boost her favorability rating. If Trump is truly stuck below 42 percent, he simply cannot win the election – he and Hillary will be splitting at least 90 percent of the vote (assume the other ten percent goes to Gary Johnson and Jill Stein), meaning she clocks him 48 percent to 42 percent.
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