Gary Johnson in Double Digits in Most States: New Poll
Former two-term governor won't make presidential debates despite historically strong showing for a Libertarian nominee.
Note: Jesse Walker wrote up this poll on Tuesday. Read his take here.
Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson will be on the ballot in all 50 states but will almost certainly not be on stage for the presidential debates that start at the end of September. And yet a new poll shows that the former governor of New Mexico is in double digits in no fewer than 42 states. In 15 of those states, he's at 15 percent or higher, the cut-off to get into the debates. Not surprisingly, he's at his highest—25 percent—in New Mexico, but he also pulls 23 percent in Utah and 19 percent in Alaska, Idaho, and South Dakota.
The poll was conducted online by the Washington Post and Survey Monkey between August 9 and September 1; about 75,000 registered voters participated. According to the poll's results, Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump in electoral votes by a tally of 244 to 126, with many traditionally Republican states (such as Texas) now in a "tossup" scenario. The Post notes that when Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein are included in the survey, the race tightens up but Clinton retains her advantage.
The full state-by-state breakdowns on all sorts of topics are here. The economy is the top issue in the election, with about one-third or more of voters in each state ranking it highest, followed by health care and terrorism (each of which pulls in the mid-teens). Overwhelming majorities in each state believe that the country will remain polarized despite who wins the election and between 65 percent and 83 percent of respondents in each state agree with the statement, "America reflects my values LESS than it has in the past."
Which may be a rare point of consensus these days. From liberal states such as Vermont and Maryland to more conservative states such as Oklahoma and Kentucky, everybody seems to feel that "their" America is dead or dying.