Conventions Are Over: Who Wins in Presidential Voting Survey?

With almost 2,600 votes cast, only 20 votes separated readers’ preferences between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Here is how the candidates fared in this latest survey.

This presidential election cycle has been one of surprises. Very few prognosticators predicted Donald Trump would win the Republican nomination when the process started. Very few thought that an Independent Socialist from Vermont (with a Brooklyn accent) would run as a Democrat and create challenges for Hillary Clinton.

Trump obviously secured the Republican nomination. Bernie Sanders garnered enthusiastic support from supporters and extended interest in the primaries for Democrats for a longer time than expected.

Despite the surprises, this election season will probably yield more surprises. Donald Trump experienced a bounce of about six points after the Republican convention. Hillary Clinton scored a similar bounce after the Democrats’ convention. In one early poll after the conventions, Mrs. Clinton led Donald Trump by a significant margin (nine points). A few days later, her poll results dropped significantly and she was reported to be ahead by less than three points. The electorate is obviously volatile and the election is still up for grabs. No doubt, there will be ups and downs in the coming weeks.

In the latest survey of our users on the presidential election, independent voters make the difference between which candidate shows up as first and which candidate comes in second. A smaller percentage of Republicans support their candidate (78%) than Democrats supporting their candidate (86.9%). Independents favored Trump over Clinton by a margin of almost 9%.

Final Survey Results

How did members of the federal community vote? In our latest poll for this presidential election, the results are very close. With about 2,600 votes, the result is a virtual tie between candidates Clinton and Trump.

In addition to the two main candidates, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson received about 6.8% of the vote and Green Party candidate Jill Stein received about 1.1% of the vote. Most of the responses were from current federal employees (67.4%) and another 29.8% were retired federal employees.

The survey was posted on a Tuesday and closed Sunday night. With initial voters, Clinton was in the lead. In the latter part of the week, the results narrowed and ended with Trump up by 20 votes. In all of the charts below, the numbers have been rounded. Here are the results:

Donald Trump (Republican) 44.6%
Hillary Clinton (Democrat) 43.6%
Gary Johnson (Libertarian) 6.8%
Jill Stein (Green Party) 1.1%
I would not vote 1.8%
Other 2.1%


How Independents Voted

Most of those voting indicated they are Independent voters (34.7%). Independent voters often decide an election whereas Democrats and Republicans tend to vote for the candidate nominated by their respective parties. In this case, most of the Independent votes went for Donald Trump. Here are the results from Independent voters:

Donald Trump 46.8%
Hillary Clinton 38.1%
Gary Johnson 8.8%
Jill Stein 1.7%
I would not vote 2.6%
Other 2%


How Democrats Voted

As expected, readers who identified as Democrats were primarily in favor of Hillary Clinton:

Hillary Clinton 86.9%
Donald Trump 7.9%
Gary Johnson 2.6%
Jill Stein 0.9%
I would not vote 0.9%
Other 1%


How Republicans Voted

Republicans were primarily in favor of Donald Trump. They voted as follows:

Donald Trump 78.4%
Hillary Clinton 9.8%
Gary Johnson 6.4%
Jill Stein 0.3%
I would not vote 2.4%
Other 2.8%

The Most Important Issues

More than 37.8% of survey takers cite the economy as the major issue in this campaign. Terrorism was a close second with 36.6% of the votes cast. 13.5% cited “other” issues ranging from Supreme Court nominees to gun control, immigration (also noted as part of the “Terrorism/National Security” selection). Health Care, Taxes and Environmental concerns each received a small percentage of votes.

About the Author

Ralph Smith has several decades of experience working with federal human resources issues. He has written extensively on a full range of human resources topics in books and newsletters and is a co-founder of two companies and several newsletters on federal human resources. Follow Ralph on Twitter: @RalphSmith47