As Expected, Donald Trump Trails Clinton By Double-Digits

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are gearing up for battle this November, but the former first lady is ahead by a landslide in a head-to-head matchup. If the election were held today, Clinton leads 54/41, which would have her  nabbing 347 electoral votes to Mr. Trump’s 191. This is a disaster, but a lot could happen in 6-8 weeks. If there’s anything we all learned this cycle, it’s that Trump is unpredictable—and that quality has usually yielded significant political dividends in the long run (via CNN):

The new CNN/ORC Poll, completed ahead of Trump's victory last night, found Clinton leads 54% to 41%, a 13-point edge over the New York businessman, her largest lead since last July.

Clinton is also more trusted than Trump on many issues voters rank as critically important, with one big exception. By a 50% to 45% margin, voters say Trump would do a better job handling the economy than Clinton would.

Almost 9 out of 10 voters in the poll called the economy extremely or very important to their vote for president, outranking any other issue tested in the poll.

Clinton has the edge on a range of other issues. She is more trusted than Trump on terrorism (50% Clinton to 45% Trump), immigration (51% to 44%), health care (55% to 39%), the income gap (54% to 37%), foreign policy (61% to 36%), education (61% to 34%) and climate change (63% to 30%).

Overall, voters are evenly split on their opinion of Clinton -- 49% see her favorably and the same share unfavorably. But a decidedly larger group (56%) see Trump unfavorably than see him favorably (41%).

Where things get a bit disconcerting is that Trump is trailing Clinton (54/41), while he already clinching decent Republican support 82/12. About 28 percent of self-identified conservatives are breaking for Hillary, so Trump needs to get his ground game operations going, his running mate vetted, and his grand campaign to convince the #NeverTrump crowd to take a rise on him. We know what Hillary Clinton would do with a Democratic Congress, are you really saying that’s worse than a hypothetical Trump administration working with a mostly Republican one? The debate continues. Yet, while Trump has to shore up with conservatives, he need to improve with women voters. He’s underwater with them by a whopping 23/70 (favorable/unfavorable), which in any other cycle, would be a general election killer. Then again, time after time, we’ve heard about Trump’s pending doom and his low ceiling, which only ended with him winning the Republican nomination.

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If Trump manages to boost his polling margin by ten points, he’s the one coming out on top with an electoral landslide over Clinton, 305-233. That’s banking on him winning Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. States that are incredibly competitive, some of which have high Hispanic populations, and one that hasn’t gone Republican since 1988. Mr. Trump has a lot of work ahead of him, which is typical of national campaigns, but more so than other Republicans in the past.