The ABC/Washington Post poll a week or so ago had a good demographic break-down of Clinton and Trump’s support. Trump now has has now consolidated just as much support from his side as Clinton has from hers. Trump gets 90 percent support from Republicans (a touch higher than her 88 percent support from Democrats) and 76 percent from conservatives (a touch lower than her 79 percent from liberals). These differences are within the margin of error. A new PPP poll finds the same thing, with Trump at 89 percent support among Republicans and Clinton with 85 percent among Democrats, and both at 87 percent support among very conservative and very liberal voters respectively.
Trump is a little off Romney’s level of support from his own side in 2012 (93 percent among Republicans and 82 percent among conservatives). But Clinton is trailing Obama’s support as well (92 support among Democrats and 86 percent among liberals). In other words, about what you would expect of two candidates who have the broad support of their own bases, but are weak and running in a year when there are a couple of third-party candidates.
So where is Trump running behind? This isn’t exactly news, but per the ABC/Washington Post poll, Trump is running behind with women; Romney won white women overall and college-educated white women, whereas Trump losing both groups, and college-educated women by an astonishing 57-32. He is running behind with Hispanics; Trump is at 19, Romney was at 27. And with blacks; Trump is at 2, and Romney was at 6.
One take-away from this is that, for all its intellectual interest and importance, the debate over whether conservative writers should support Trump is almost entirely pointless in strict electoral terms. Trump has the base, and the stray conservative opinion-maker coming around isn’t going to help him with the groups he now needs to reach. In terms of the outcome of the election, the sad fact is that what George Will says about Trump now matters much less than what Alicia Machado says.