Clinton and Trump are neck and neck nationally ahead of Monday's debate


Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump are separated by less than the 4.5 percent margin of error in a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Sunday morning. Clinton has maintained a substantial lead over Trump for most of the campaign, but the gap has increasingly narrowed as Election Day approaches, and this survey sees that trend continue.
Among likely voters Clinton scores 46 percent support to Trump's 44 percent, while Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson takes 5 percent and the Green Party's Jill Stein has 1 percent national support. If Johnson and Stein are removed as options, Clinton leads Trump 49 to 47 percent. Among registered voters, Clinton and Trump are tied at 46 percent in a two-way race and 41 percent in a four-way race.
More than 100 million people are expected to watch Monday's first general election debate between the two candidates, the largest debate audience in U.S. history.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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