HUFFPOLLSTER: Most Americans Think Trump Responded Inappropriately To Orlando Shooting

Americans see the Orlando shooting as both a hate crime and an act of terrorism. Donald Trump's response to the attack didn't go over well with most Americans. And few voters say that Obama's endorsement changed their minds about the election. This is HuffPollster for Thursday, June 16, 2016.

AMERICANS VIEW ORLANDO SHOOTING AS BOTH HATE CRIME AND TERRORISM - Anthony Salvanto, Fred Backus, Sarah Dutton and Jennifer De Pinto: "Most Americans (57 percent) describe the shooting over the weekend at a nightclub in Orlando as both an act of terrorism and a hate crime against gays and lesbians. 14 percent think it was mostly a terror act, while 25 percent think it was mostly a hate crime…. President Obama gets net positive ratings for his response to the shooting in Orlando. 44 percent approve, while 34 percent disapprove. About a quarter don't have an opinion. When asked to assess the responses of the presumptive nominees for President, Americans are divided on Hillary Clinton's response to the attack, while ratings of Trump are more negative. 51 percent of Americans disapprove of the way Trump is responding to the Orlando attack, while just 25 percent approve. Most Democrats (62 percent) approve of Clinton's response, while just half of Republicans (50 percent) approve of Trump's. More independents are critical of Trump's response than Clinton's." [CBS ]

Trump’s response was not what Americans wanted - Philip Bump: "On Monday, [Donald] Trump gave a speech...suggesting an expansion of his proposal to bar Muslims from entering the country and casting suspicion on Muslims already living in the United States. In a speech on Wednesday, he seemed to renew an argument that he first brought up last year: surveilling mosques and Muslim communities more broadly to suss out terror links. And, of course, Trump also suggested that President Obama has been soft in the fight on terror because he sympathizes with Muslims. A Bloomberg poll conducted after the attack found that Trump's proposals on surveillance and aspersions against Obama aren't very popular. What's more, his proposal to ban Muslims from traveling to the U.S. remains unpopular, with two-thirds of those who had an opinion disapproving. That's slightly more support than polling found right after he first proposed it, but not much….Trump's response to the shooting, in other words, mostly isn't in line with how Americans think the country should respond. Which may be part of the reason why, when asked how the current and next president have responded to Orlando, Trump gets far worse marks than either Obama or Hillary Clinton." [WashPost ]

VOTERS SAY THEY DON'T REALLY CARE ABOUT OBAMA'S ENDORSEMENT - HuffPollster: "President Barack Obama’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton won’t change what most people do at the voting booth in November, voters say. In a new HuffPost/YouGov survey , just 14 percent of voters say Obama’s endorsement makes them more likely to support Clinton. Twenty-two percent say it makes them less likely to do so, and 62 percent say it doesn’t make any difference….It makes sense to be wary of questions like this. People aren’t necessarily reliable narrators of their own motivations for voting, and, more than anything, their responses may reflect their pre-existing feelings about both politicians….Regardless of whether he directly changes any minds, Obama’s willingness to act as a campaign surrogate, and to directly challenge presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump , comes from a place of strength….But there’s an interesting contradiction at work: While opinions of Obama’s presidency are on the upswing, opinions about the country as a whole haven’t followed suit." [HuffPost ]

VOTERS DIFFER ON REASONS FOR DISLIKING CLINTON AND TRUMP - Morning Consult: "[T]he main drivers of Clinton and Trump’s unfavorable numbers play in to larger campaign narratives: Voters think Trump is racist, and Clinton is untrustworthy. Even more importantly, both are underwater in almost every state….For voters who have an unfavorable view of Hillary Clinton, their dislike can be boiled down to one word: trust. Almost half (47 percent) of voters who have an unfavorable view of Clinton don’t think she is trustworthy and almost four in 10 voters (39 percent) say she is corrupt….A little over one-fifth of voters (21 percent) said Clinton changes her positions when it’s politically convenient….Voters who don’t like Donald Trump have a lot of reasons driving their distaste for the presumptive Republican nominee. But the most commonly cited ones are that Trump is racist (25 percent) and does not have the right experience to be president (20 percent)....Additionally, one-fifth of voters with an unfavorable view said Trump doesn’t have the right experience to be president." [Morning Consult]  

PRE-REFERENDUM POLLING IS ALWAYS DIFFICULT - Catherine Bosley: "With Britons gearing up to decide whether to quit the European Union -- only the third U.K.-wide referendum since 1973 -- there’s often doubt about whether opinion surveys are credible . Notable snafus in the past have included failing to predict Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives would win a majority in last year’s general election. The handful of pollsters in Switzerland, where as many as 12 popular initiatives are put to a national ballot each year, share their U.K. counterparts’ predicament. While they have the advantage of historical data stretching back to 1891, they have to glean information in a linguistically and culturally diverse country, making it difficult to gauge overarching national trends. 'Polling for elections isn’t so hard, but referendums are much harder to conduct surveys for, and it’s harder still if you don’t have a point of reference in the recent past,' [pollster] Claude Longchamp said." [Bloomberg ]  

HUFFPOLLSTER VIA EMAIL! - You can receive this daily update every weekday morning via email! Just click here , enter your email address, and click "sign up." That's all there is to it (and you can unsubscribe anytime).

THURSDAY'S 'OUTLIERS' - Links to the best of news at the intersection of polling, politics and political data:

-John Sides sees no indication that Donald Trump is hurting Republicans down-ballot. [WashPost ]

-Mark Murray thinks Bernie Sanders is losing influence by not conceding to Hillary Clinton. [NBC ]   

-Trump's poll numbers are worse than John McCain's and Mitt Romney's were in 2008 and 2012. [National Review ]

-More than a third of Clinton's supporters want her to pick Elizabeth Warren as her vice president. [Bloomberg ]

-Polls offer a reminder of how much t black and Hispanic voters dislike Trump. [HuffPost ]

-Jim Norman considers whether the Orlando shooting will raise Americans' concerns about guns and terrorism. . [Gallup ]

-A new Marquette Law School poll shows Wisconsin Republicans’ enthusiasm for the election dropping. [WMTV ]