By ACSI , Special for USDR
Hillary Clinton expands her lead over Donald Trump to 14 points in the latest voter share survey from the American Customer Satisfaction Index. The weekly poll of registered voters surveyed after the second presidential debate and the leaked audio of Trump making lewd comments about sexually aggressive behavior has Clinton and Trump moving in opposite directions, with the Democrat at 50 percent of the popular vote and the Republican candidate at 36 percent.
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 satisfaction and expectations between candidates. By this measure, strong supporters are unlikely to shift. Clinton continues to hold an edge in strong supporters, 36 percent to Trump’s 25 percent—a new low for the GOP candidate. While strong support for Clinton slips to 36 percent, the downturn is offset by a gain among weak supporters to 13 percent. Trump’s voter share declines in both strong and weak categories. Undecideds, or those who gave both candidates equal satisfaction scores, increase 1 point to 14 percent.
The ACSI surveyed 634 registered voters nationwide between October 10 and October 13, 2016, for a total of 12,072 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.
SOURCE American Customer Satisfaction Index
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