NEW YORK CITY, New York — An Ohio battleground poll shows Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton in a dead heat, and Florida Gov. Rick Scott—a Trump supporter, whose Super PAC conducted the poll—tells Breitbart News exclusively that this is proof independents want change.
“Donald Trump is tied with Hillary Clinton in Ohio, and that was before we found out that she put the secretary of state’s office up for sale like the Lincoln Bedroom was when Bill Clinton was president,” Scott said in an emailed statement. “This poll shows that independent voters are looking for an outsider like Donald Trump who is working for them – not special interests. Our ads are working to pull the cover back on Hillary’s legacy of corruption, and that means more and more voters will support Donald Trump.”
Scott would certainly know something about outsiders winning major elections: before he was elected governor of Florida, he had never held political office. Scott has been one of Trump’s earliest and strongest supporters, fighting hard to elect his fellow outsider to the White House.
Scott is the head of the Rebuilding America Now PAC, which—in conjunction with pollsters from On Message, Inc.—conducted a battleground survey in the state of Ohio. The survey of 600 likely voters from August 13 to August 17, with a margin of error of 4 percent, shows Trump tied with Clinton at 45 percent apiece with 10 percent undecided in a two-way race. In the four-way race with Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein included, Trump and Clinton are still tied at 42 percent, while Johnson gets 8 percent and Stein just 2 percent—with 6 percent undecided.
But more importantly, pollster Wes Anderson of On Message told Breitbart News in a brief phone interview on Thursday that Trump is surging with independents far ahead of Hillary Clinton. In fact, the data shows that Trump is winning 53 percent of independents, while Clinton is just getting 33 percent of independents—with 15 percent undecided. That is a 20-point advantage for Trump.
“A couple things: her numbers are static, so Trump has a few bad days and was sliding—which he was—but then he puts four or five good days together and immediately bounces back,” Anderson said, adding:
The point of this is, why is that? You have a majority of independents, and an overwhelming majority of them who may or may not be voting for Trump, who just can’t stomach the idea of voting for her. What’s not talked about, for all the opportunities the press has, they talk about Trump being his own worst enemy, but what’s lost in all that discussion is what we’re seeing in battleground after battleground: You have a Democrat nominee that a majority of the voters tell us that they do not want to vote for. They might not necessarily … be voting for Trump yet, but his numbers bounced back amazingly quick after he puts together three days of teleprompter speeches where he doesn’t envelop himself in controversy. This really isn’t about him. It’s about her.
The poll also shows that voters significantly want a change in direction from the path down which President Barack Obama has taken America—a path down which Hillary Clinton would take America even further. A whopping 60 percent, an overwhelming majority, responded that they wanted to “change direction” from the path that Obama has taken America. Just 36 percent, an underwhelming minority, want to “continue policies” that Obama has developed—which is the campaign that Clinton has run.
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