There's good news for Trump and bad news for Hillary in the latest numbers.
The Quinnipiac University poll released today has Trump leading among both white men and women, but the gap for men is much more pronounced when considering a specific subset.
The poll has Trump leading Clinton among white men 60 percent to 26 percent in a head-to-head matchup. Among white women, Trump has a 1 percent lead (41-40), which is within the margin of error.
Romney beat Obama among white men, 62 to 35. Trump is within the margin of error on white male support. Which is crucial as this is his core demographic. White women is a group that Romney won 56 to 42. Trump needs to do a lot better than he's doing now.
The 26 percent side of that shows that Hillary Clinton performs very badly with white men. This will be very damaging in some key states. Particularly it will make it harder to hold on to some blue states that have light minority populations and which are dependent on the kind of white male voters Trump has been courting. On the other hand, the situation among white women is very serious. This is a major slice of the voting pie. And they are a Republican base. Trump is going to have to make a real effort to at least match Romney's numbers here. And it appears that Hillary Clinton is performing well above Obama's numbers with white women. They may end up deciding the election.
Polls of course vary in accuracy. And they can be shaped by all sorts of agendas. But ignoring them also leads to disaster. That's a hard lesson from 2012.
Turnout is of course crucial. The most significant split may be between motivated and unmotivated voters. This is Hillary Clinton's greatest weakness. She has some passionate supporters, but few and far between. It's also Trump's greatest strength. There are plenty of groups he's unpopular with, but his supporters are very enthusiastic about him. Hillary Clinton matches him in unpopularity, but has little in the way of a base of support. And it's unclear if the black voters who have helped her keep Bernie Sanders at bay will turn out aggressively for her in a general election the way the way that they did for Obama. The answer will likely be in the negative.