ACSI Poll: Clinton Voter-Share Lead Widens to 15 Points Over Trump

The ACSI uses an economic model of buyer choice applied to voting behavior. Like consumers, voters choose candidates based on the expected satisfaction (or utility in economics) that a candidate will deliver once in office. In the market for goods and services, expected satisfaction is predicted by past satisfaction. In the absence of "actual" prior satisfaction in advance of the inauguration of a new president, the ACSI uses a proxy: satisfaction with each candidate and his or her campaign. This measure is informative about the strength/weakness of a candidate's support. The expected satisfaction is forward looking and used to predict market share, or in this case, voter share.

The ACSI characterizes supporters as "strong" or "weak" depending on the gap in both satisfaction and expectations for each of the candidates. By this measure, strong supporters are unlikely to shift. Clinton's strong support surges to a new high of 43 percent, giving her a large 18-point edge over Trump, whose strong support is flat at 25 percent. In the more fluid category of weak supporters, Trump inches up to 13 percent while Clinton slips to 10 percent, but the two are only 3 points apart here compared with the much broader gap in strong support. Undecideds, or those who give both candidates equal satisfaction scores, drops down to 9 percent, as most voters are now solidifying their preference.

The ACSI surveyed 792 registered voters nationwide from October 20 to October 21, 2016, for a total of 12,864 since the survey began on August 1, 2016. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points for voter share. The ACSI Presidential Election Survey will report results weekly through Election Day. Visit our blog ACSIMatters.com for additional data and tables.

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No advertising or other promotional use can be made of the data and information in this release without the express prior written consent of ACSI LLC.

About ACSI
The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is a national economic indicator of customer evaluations of the quality of products and services available to household consumers in the United States. The ACSI uses data from interviews with roughly 70,000 customers annually as inputs to an econometric model for analyzing customer satisfaction with more than 300 companies in 43 industries and 10 economic sectors, including various services of federal and local government agencies.

ACSI results are released throughout the year, with all measures reported on a scale of 0 to 100. ACSI data have proven to be strongly related to a number of essential indicators of micro and macroeconomic performance. For example, firms with higher levels of customer satisfaction tend to have higher earnings and stock returns relative to competitors. Stock portfolios based on companies that show strong performance in ACSI deliver excess returns in up markets as well as down markets. At the macro level, customer satisfaction has been shown to be predictive of both consumer spending and GDP growth.

ACSI and its logo are Registered Marks of the University of Michigan, licensed worldwide exclusively to American Customer Satisfaction Index LLC with the right to sublicense.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Chaat Butsunturn, 415-391-7900 x1214
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OR Amanda Roberts, 202-535-7800 x1114
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SOURCE American Customer Satisfaction Index

Related Links

http://www.theacsi.org