It’s September 4, and this is your Sunday morning weekly poll round-up and Sweet Meteor of Death invitation. This week, Trump traveled to Mexico, said some nice things, came back, and said the opposite. Then the FBI tried to pull a quiet Friday afternoon of a holiday weekend dump of data that shows the Hillary email madness is all its grotesquerie. With all that going on, the polls have narrowed, Trump took the lead in a few, and at least one polling outlet offered up a a shrug with their results. So let’s get to them, if you dare.

Here we go.

Reuters/Ipsos Daily Poll

The Reuters/Ipsos Daily tracking on Trump vs. Clinton (animated GIF):

The daily tracker shows Secretary Hillary Clinton reliably 3 or more points over Donald Trump. He has an ever so slight gain toward the end of the week.

We mention last week’s because Donald Trump’s number remains the same, while Hillary’s dropped. That’s a narrowing due to her losing votes, which is something Trump needs.

They maintain about equal numbers among party identifying voters. Hillary’s lead narrows to four when the third parties are mixed in. Considering that Johnson is polling at 11 in this one, that suggests he’s bleeding from her. Stein polls at 5, which is higher than she is most other polls.

In a four-way general election match-up, Clinton leads with 41 percent, a 4-point margin over Trump (37 percent). Libertarian Gary Johnson maintains 11 percent of the vote and Green Party candidate Jill Stein holds steady with 5 percent.

Monmouth
In the latest Monmouth University Poll, we find that people really hate the candidates. Clinton has a 7 point lead over Trump, though, at 43 to Trump’s 36.

On popularity, things sound pretty bad.

The number of voters who cannot bring themselves to voice a favorable opinion of either major party nominee is unlike anything witnessed in past elections according to new analysis from the Monmouth University Poll . Nearly no voters have a positive opinion of both Clinton and Trump while one-third do not have a favorable view of either candidate. These results are unusual.

In the current poll, 34% of voters have a favorable opinion of Clinton and 51% have an unfavorable view of her. Even fewer (26%) have a favorable opinion of Trump and 57% have an unfavorable view of him. When these results are combined, though, only 2% have a favorable opinion of both candidates, while 35% do not have a favorable opinion of either nominee.

USA Today/Suffolk
USA Today’s latest has Hillary up 7 points over Donald Trump, at 42 to a dismal 35 in the four way race.

But it’s all about bad feelings, not good ones.

Clinton holds a 7-percentage-point lead over Trump, 48%-41%, close to the 6-point lead she held two months ago in the survey. But the proportion of undecided voters is chipping away, now below 10%. And in a four-way ballot, support for third-party contenders has ticked up, to 9% for Libertarian Gary Johnson and 4% for Jill Stein of the Green Party.

Driving the election is antipathy toward the competition: 80% of Trump supporters and 62% of Clinton supporters say if the other candidate wins in November, they would feel “scared,” the most negative of four possible choices.

As in every poll out there. the unprecedented low favorability and likability ratings for candidates is the deciding feature.

LA Times/USC
This poll, which is a daily tracker, has Trump up over Hillary this week. Like Reuters, being a daily tracker it shows more immediate consequences of actions, such as Mexico visits and email scandals.

In an article that oddly casts a sideways glance at their own poll results, the LA Times suggests any disparity between their outcomes and other outlets may be due to a bloc of disaffected voters, but then says that it may be tough to get that bloc to actually come out and vote for Trump. It seems to us they might have instead noted the immediacy of daily tracking, but MSM gotta MSM.

in a head to head, Hillary’s lead is six points.

Again, this shows that adding the third parties hurts Hillary more than Donald.

From the American Spectator:

Much has been made about Gary Johnson’s attraction to angry Republicans who don’t want to vote for Trump. Again, that’s the Clinton-friendly media machine that keeps talking about that. What they desperately want everyone to not notice is that his laid-back stoner vibe and liberal social positions make him attractive to the Bernie supporters who still feel utterly disenfranchised by the Democratic party.

Mostly because the Democratic party utterly disenfranchised them, of course.

Even if Johnson doesn’t make it into the debate, he may still be able to siphon votes. If played properly, he could use his exclusion as an even bigger selling point to the disenfranchised crowd. It won’t make him win, but just think of the spoiler possibilities, especially with the aching Bernie crowd.

This is a point we have made many times here in the Weekly Roundup. The third parties are drawing support away from both candidates but, in many polls, it hurts Hillary more than it hurts Donald. It’s a useful thing for Trump supporters to remember when discussing #NeverTrump.

As you can see on the trend chart, Hillary remained steady while Trump dropped a point.

In the four way match-up, they score Clinton +3.2 over Trump, with 41.4 for Hillary, 38.2 for Donald, 7.8 for Gary Johnson, and 3.1 for Jill Stein. That represents a drop for both Hillary and Donald over last week, and a gain for both Johnson and Stein.

Hillary still leads Trump, and has the top spot in virtually every poll. There are a few exceptions, and the race has narrowed over last week, but she remains ahead despite so many recent troubles. Still, nobody likes her and they are starting to like her even less. And the illusion of her inevitability has been undermined. Next week this thing could narrow further.

This race is about unpopularity. The question that America is deciding now is who do they hate the least. While they hate the third parties less, there is of course no confidence in their ability to win and so they have minor, though slightly increasing support. Among the two major parties, it’s about fear, it’s about loathing, and it’s about anger. But mainly, it’s about … sigh.