U.S. Poll: Clinton widens gap

Hillary Clinton has created a 12-point lead over Donald Trump and has reached 50% support nationally among likely voters, a new ABC News tracking poll shows. The poll shows Clinton with 50% support to Trump’s 38%, with 5% backing Libertarian Gary Johnson and 2% supporting the Green Party’s Jill Stein. The poll comes on the heels of the third presidential debate, which a post-debate CNN/ORC snap poll showed Clinton won. 

The ABC News survey’s results show Clinton with a 20-point advantage among women, and a 3-point edge with men — a group that has tilted toward Trump for most of the 2016 race. Clinton leads among voters of all education levels — but her 3-point advantage with those without college degrees is smaller than her 20-point lead among voters with college degrees. Conway touts Trump’s ‘drain the swamp’ message, admits ‘we are behind’ Trump’s strongest group remains white, non-college educated voters, who back him 55% to 36%. 

The results showing Clinton with a growing lead largely match CNN’s Poll of Polls, which averages recent national surveys. That Poll of Polls shows Clinton ahead 48% to Trump’s 39%. The ABC News poll was conducted October 20-22 and includes 874 likely voters. Its margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

 Meanwhile, the Log Cabin Republicans, one of the country’s most influential LGBT Republican groups, announced Saturday that it would not back the party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump. The group, while praising Trump as “perhaps the most pro-LGBT presidential nominee in the history of the Republican Party,” said it had objections to views held by some of Trump’s advisers and his support for a bill that would protect people who disagree with same-sex marriage from federal penalties.

 “Log Cabin Republicans have long emphasised that we are not a single-issue organisation, nor are our members single-issue voters,” the group said in a press release. It added that it will instead focus on down-ballot races to preserve Republican majorities in Congress.

 Trump has occasionally mentioned LGBT Americans as a presidential candidate, most notably in the aftermath of the attack on a gay Orlando nightclub in June and his acceptance speech at the Republican convention in July. In that speech, The Washington Blade noted, he became the first GOP nominee to positively mention LGBT rights in that setting.

 “As Mr. Trump spoke positively about the LGBT community in the United States, he concurrently surrounded himself with senior advisers with a record of opposing LGBT equality, and committed himself to supporting legislation such as the so-called ‘First Amendment Defense Act’ that Log Cabin Republicans opposes,” Log Cabin Republicans said.

 Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, has been criticized for his support of a law that would have allowed businesses to turn away gay and lesbian customers in the name of religious freedom.