This weekend's ABC News/Washington Post poll was very bad news for the Donald Trump campaign. Not only did it have Hillary Clinton with a comfortable, 50-42, lead over Trump in the head-to-head matchup, it provided more evidence that the Clinton campaign has done a better job corralling the core Democratic groups than the Trump team has done with core Republican groups.
The ABC/WaPo poll offers extensive breakdowns of vote preferences by demographic group, which can be compared to the 2012 presidential exit poll. Doing that gives a good sense of how well each candidate is performing with the base Democratic or Republican groups, as well as groups that roughly split their votes. (To account for the fact that a large chunk of voters remain undecided, we'll compare margins in the ABC/WaPo poll to 2012 exit poll margins.)
To start, let's look at how Trump is doing with core Republican groups relative to Mitt Romney's performance in 2012.
On balance, Trump is doing worse—much worse, in fact—with the essential groups of the Republican coalition. ABC/WaPo actually has him losing several groups that Romney won handily—the middle aged, elderly, and white Catholic vote.
His underperformance among white voters may not appear terrible at first glance, but remember: Whites will comprise about 70 percent of the electorate, and his appeal to non-whites is limited, so Trump will have to improve on Romney's margin among whites if he hopes to win. Right now, he's not even close.
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04.28.2024