Trump's 'Narrow Path' to Victory, at USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times 'Daybreak' Poll

Following-up from earlier, "Donald Trump Ahead by Three Points at USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times 'Daybreak' Poll."

At LAT, "Donald Trump still has a path to victory, but it's a tough one, USC/L.A. Times poll shows":

Although he trails in nearly all national surveys and polls of most battleground states, Donald Trump still has a potential route to victory, albeit a difficult one that would require him to coax many people who sat out the last election to vote this time around, the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Daybreak tracking poll finds.

The existence of a bloc of disaffected voters large enough to potentially swing the election Trump’s way is the main finding from an analysis of the first eight weeks of the daily tracking poll.

Whether Trump can convert a significant number of those potential supporters into voters over the final two months of the presidential campaign could determine whether the election ends up as a close contest or a runaway for Hillary Clinton.

That group of potential voters also helps explain why the Daybreak poll’s results have consistently been more favorable to Trump than other major surveys.

The key group driving that result are people who sat out the 2012 election but say they plan to vote this year. Trump, who’s due to give a major speech on immigration Wednesday, leads among them in the poll. He trails Clinton among those who voted four years ago or were too young to do so.

The design of the Daybreak poll means it reflects, more strongly than some other surveys, the views of those who didn’t vote before but say they will this year. As a result, the poll presents something of a best-case scenario for Trump — one in which he succeeds in getting large numbers of previous nonvoters to cast ballots for him.

Even that best case is a problematic one for the Republican nominee since he seldom does better than a tie in the poll’s results. For the last two weeks, even as most polls have shown Clinton with a significant edge over Trump, the Daybreak poll has shown the two candidates roughly even, trading narrow leads back and forth. The poll also shows that a large percentage of voters remain uncertain about their choice.

As of Tuesday morning, the poll showed Trump ahead 45%-42%, well within the margin of error.

Trump’s situation is even more challenging because of the difficulty of turning nonvoters into voters, a task for which Trump’s campaign may be especially ill-suited...

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