The latest Economist/YouGov poll had Clinton 4 points ahead of Trump. That’s pretty close to the latest poll average from RealClearPolitics, which has her 2.7 points up. The Economist/YouGov poll also showed that 51 percent of Americans consider Clinton “qualified” to be president–and only 30 percent of Americans think Trump is.
That too is consistent with other polls. In the latest Washington Post/ABC poll, 59 percent of people considered her qualified and 39 percent didn’t; 37 percent considered him qualified and 60 percent didn’t. That 37–60 percent split on Trump was exactly identical to the one the pollster found in September 2015. Winning the primaries doesn’t appear to have changed Americans’ attitudes on this question.
I still think that Clinton’s best play is to make Trump’s unfitness for the presidency her central campaign theme. If these numbers stand, she won’t have to convince voters that Trump is unqualified to be president. She will merely have to convince voters who already think that he is unqualified (and that she is qualified) to vote on that basis.
It is possible that being a major-party nominee will improve Trump’s numbers. Whether or not it does will be one of the key ways to measure whether the Republican convention has been a political success for him.