Drawing enormous support from the state’s non-white voters, Hillary Clinton holds a 5-point edge over Donald Trump in Florida, according to a new poll from Monmouth University out Tuesday.
The poll found Clinton leading Trump among likely voters in the crucial battleground, 46%-41%. Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein, both of whom will be on Florida’s ballot, drew 6% and 1%, respectively.
Monmouth’s poll produced another unfavorable finding for Trump: 54% of Florida voters believe the GOP nominee’s recent turnabout on President Barack Obama’s origins was made for political reasons. Only 24% think Trump believes that Obama is a natural-born citizen.
After years of promoting conspiracy theories regarding the first black President’s birthplace, Trump changed course last week.
He still has plenty of work to do on that front in Florida. According to the poll, Clinton leads Trump among Hispanic, black and Asian voters in the state, 69%-16%. Those three blocs comprise one-third of Florida’s electorate.
Clinton’s 5-point advantage is wider than other recent polls out of the state, including a CNN/ORC survey released last week that found Trump up by 3, within the poll’s 3.5 percentage point margin of error. But it’s smaller than her lead in the previous Monmouth poll in Florida last month, which showed Clinton up by 9. That margin was also larger than other Florida polls conducted at the time.
The latest Monmouth poll was conducted September 16-19 using phone interviews with 400 likely Florida voters. It has a margin of error of 4.9%.