Over at the Daily Caller, an article by Larry Keane of the National Shooting Sports Foundation shows an August NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found the issue of gun rights topped a poll when they removed the usual top concerns like the economy or foreign policy. They asked:
Now, let me read you a number of issues that create much discussion, but unlike foreign policy, national defense, and the economy, they sometimes do not get as much attention. Of these issues, which one or two, if any, are important enough to you to have an impact on how you vote in an election?
On their list of issues, gun rights/gun control topped the list at 35 percent, followed by environmental issues at 30 percent, immigration at 27 percent, and abortion at 17 percent. The pollsters questioned 1200 adults from August 5-9, but the results are still trickling out. This number hasn’t been mentioned on NBC News programs.
Then again, as often happens, there are other NBC/WSJ poll results that NBC didn’t talk about. For example, they asked how people felt about the state of the U.S. economy, and ten percent said excellent, and 47 percent said good (or 57 percent positive). Thirty percent picked “only fair,” and 13 percent said poor.
Then consider the staggering unpopularity of Hillary Clinton at this point. Pollsters asked respondents how they felt about Donald Trump: very positive, positive, neutral, negative, and very negative. It came out 36 percent positive or very positive, to 52 percent negative or very negative (40 percent very).
But then there was Hillary: 30 percent positive/very positive to 53 percent negative/very negative (38 percent very). Last October, before the election, Hillary had 40 percent positive/ very positive, and 50 percent negative/very negative. By comparison, Sen. Bernie Sanders is at 44/30 positive, and Barack Obama's at 52/35.
NBC skipped over these findings when they interviewed Hillary last week, since that might put a damper on the book tour. Instead, Today co-host Savannah Guthrie acted like she had never been shown these numbers:
GUTHRIE: I was going to say, we just have ten seconds left. If this election – we have nine months of this presidency now, if the election were held today, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton on the ballot again, would you win?
CLINTON: Oh, I don’t know. I think that there’s at least a 50-50 chance I would.
Chuck Todd has cited other numbers from this August poll on Meet the Press – both on September 3 and on September 17. But not these numbers.
