Why Recent National Polls Should Worry Hillary Clinton

In the last week, a slew of national polls looking at a general-election matchup between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have been released. Despite varying sample sizes and methodologies, the results were strikingly consistent. In aggregate, according to the RealClearPolitics average, they show Trump narrowing Clinton’s lead to a single percentage point.

A closer look at two of the more well established polls used in the RealClearPolitics average reveals that movement toward Trump does not appear to be an artifact of unrealistic estimates of the composition of the electorate—the factor that plagued all those polls predicting a President Mitt Romney in 2012. It also shows the tightening of the race is not completely due to Republicans coming home to their presumptive nominee. Trump’s increased strength boils down to a shift in support among independents, and that should be of concern to Brooklyn.