Supporters of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump opponents are only slowly warming to the presidential nominees, new Emerson College polls in seven Northeastern states found.
The surveys, released Wednesday, show Clinton leading in seven states where she’s already favored. Her margins range from a high of 21 percentage points in Vermont to 3 in Rhode Island.
“Both Clinton and Trump are having difficulty winning over voters who went for their opponents during the primaries,” a poll analysis found.
In six of the seven states surveyed – Maine, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Connecticut – 60 to 65 percent of supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who lost the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination to Clinton, were now behind her. In Rhode Island, half are backing Clinton.
Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee, gets the backing of 14 percent of Sanders backers in Vermont, 12 percent in Rhode Island and 11 percent in Maine.
Trump, the Republican nominee, has found similar roadblocks. In six states, fewer than half of the supporters of onetime GOP rivals Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Gov. John Kasich are supporting Trump.
Libertarian Gary Johnson is popular with this group, getting one-third of the Vermont supporters and 30 percent in New Hampshire. He wins more than 20 percent of the opponents’ backing in Connecticut, Maine and Rhode Island.
David Lightman: 202-383-6101, @lightmandavid