Poll: Clinton leads Trump by 6-8 points in Virginia

A new poll from Public Policy Polling has Hillary Clinton up on Donald Trump in Virginia by six to eight points.

In a four-way race with Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Jill Stein included, Clinton is at 45 percent, to 39 percent for Trump, 6 percent for Johnson and 2 percent for Stein. Clinton leads Trump 50 percent to 42 percent in a head-to-head.

A big reason for Clinton’s margins is the reluctance of Republican voters to support Trump. Trump is at 81 percent support among Republicans, while Clinton has the backing of 93 percent of Democratic voters.

Clinton is also relatively popular in Virginia compared to Trump – with a 44 percent favorable/51 percent unfavorable split, to Trump’s 34 percent favorable/60 percent unfavorable.

Clinton benefits as well from the relative popularity of President Obama, with 54 percent saying they would prefer another four years of an Obama presidency to 41 percent who would support Trump in that hypothetical head-to-head.

Significantly, Clinton leads Trump among undecideds in that particular hypothetical vote by 29 points.

More notes from the poll:

• Generally when a state level politician takes the national stage, we find their standing goes down on the home front. That’s not the case for Tim Kaine- his 50/37 approval rating with Virginians is up a good bit from 43/35 when we last polled the state in June. For some lower information voters Kaine’s selection as the Vice Presidential pick is the first time they’ve given him much thought, and early indications are that for the most part they like what they see.
• 26% of Virginians think Trump supported the war in Iraq, 19% think he opposed it, and 42% correctly think that he both supported and opposed the war. Even among Trump’s own voters a 44% plurality think he took both sides on the war and evidently are unbothered by that.
• Trump supporters continue to be convinced that if Hillary Clinton wins the election it will only be because the results were rigged for her. 60% think a Clinton win would be due to voter fraud, to only 29% who think it would come because she got more voters.
• 65% of voters think Trump needs to release his tax returns, to only 25% who don’t think it’s necessary for him to.