As GOP nominee Donald Trump continues to surge all across the nation, he has narrowed the gap and surpassed Hillary Clinton in the important battleground state of Ohio.
The RealClearPolitics average of polls has Trump leading Clinton by some two points in a state Clinton has enjoyed a leading position in since Trump became the nominee.
RealClearPolitics has Trump leading 42.5 points to Clinton’s 40.8 in a four-way race with the Libertarian and Green Party candidates.
In all but two of the polls RCP averaged, Trump was seen as the leader. In one he was tied and only the CBS News/YouGov poll had Clinton up over the real estate mogul.
In four polls, Trump was up over Clinton.
The Suffolk poll gave Trump a three-point lead with a 4.4 point margin of error (MOE). Quinnipiac found Trump up four with a 3.5 MOE. And Bloomberg and CNN/ORC both gave Trump a five-point lead with a 3.5 MOE.
The outlier poll, the CBS News/YouGov poll, taken of 994 likely voters between September 7-9, found Clinton in the lead 47 to 39, while the other polls had Trump up three to five points. This means the CBS poll skewed the results and Trump would have been up even more in this newest RCP average.
The Emerson poll of 800 likely voters saw a tie between Trump and Clinton with a 3.4 MOE.
All polls were taken between Aug 25 and Sept. 14. The polls were also taken of likely voters.
Meanwhile, Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson didn’t exceed 10 points in any of the polls and Green Party candidate Jill Stein didn’t even reach five points.
Independents in Ohio have been trending toward Trump for some time, as well. At the end of August, an Emerson college poll found that Trump was leading in Ohio by 17 points.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.