New Bloomberg poll shows Trump has crossed a crucial threshold to lead Clinton
- Bloomberg Politics poll gives Trump the lead over Clinton going into the debate tonight.
- Trump: 43%
- Clinton: 41%
- In head-to-head race excluding other candidates, Trump and Clinton are on 46% each.
A new poll by Bloomberg Politics has given Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump a small lead over the Democrats' Hillary Clinton going into Monday's debate.
The poll puts the two candidates in a dead heat, at 46% each, if you exclude the Green Party and Libertarian candidates.
More significantly, it shows that Trump's momentum since June's low of 38.3% is still going. He has obliterated the lead Clinton held for the last three months.
This chart of rolling averages from Real Clear Politics shows how Trump has gained ground since the summer:
The chart does not include today's poll.
The Bloomberg result is significant because even it shows Trump is above the 44% level, which has previously been the uppermost ceiling of his support in a head to head split on RCP's poll tracker. This is now the sixth time in the race that Trump has hit or broken through that 44% barrier.
The result comes after a shaky period for Clinton in which she got a bout of pneumonia and her team was slow to explain why she fainted at a 9/11 memorial ceremony, and a good period for Trump in which he admitted he now believed President Obama was born in the US, reversing years of lies on that issue.