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Clinton leads Trump by 3 points: Poll

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Hillary ClintonWashington : With less than two weeks to go, the race for the White House has narrowed as Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton now has a three-point advantage over Republican rival Donald Trump, according to a new Fox News poll.

The poll, released on Wednesday, showed Clinton leading 49-44 per cent in the head-to-head matchup. That 5-point advantage is at the edge of the error margin. She was up seven a week ago (49-42 per cent).

Trump was helped by increased backing among independents and greater strength of support: 68 per cent of those backing the real-estate mogul support him “strongly”, compared to 61 per cent for Clinton.

Independents favoured Trump over Clinton by 13 points (41-28 per cent). He had a seven-point advantage last week, and two weeks ago they were tied at 35 per cent each.

Trump leads among whites (+14 points) and men (+5), although his best groups remain white evangelical Christians (+56) and whites without a college degree (+28), the poll showed.

Clinton has commanding leads among blacks (+77 points), unmarried women (+27), voters under 30 (+18), and women (+10). First-time voters are also more likely to back her (+16).

The candidates garner almost equal backing among the party faithful: 83 per cent of Democrats back Clinton, while 81 per cent of Republicans support Trump.

All in all, likely voters do not think Trump was up to the task of being President: less than half think he was qualified (46 per cent) and even fewer feel he has the temperament to serve effectively (36 per cent). Over half lack confidence in his judgment in a crisis (56 per cent).

Clinton trounces Trump on each of those measures: 64 per cent believe she was qualified, 62 per cent has said she has the temperament, and 56 per cent are confident in her judgment.

However, there were a couple of areas where the two are about evenly matched. First, 52 per cent feel Clinton “stands up” for people like them, and 49 per cent feel that way about Trump, the poll revealed.

Also on their honesty — or lack thereof: a record-low 30 per cent of likely voters think Clinton is honest and trustworthy, while 34 per cent said Trump is.

The Fox News Poll is based on landline and cellphone interviews with 1,309 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted from October 22-25.

The survey includes results among 1,221 likely voters. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points for results among both registered and likely voters.

 

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Lockdowns in China Force Urban Communities to Defy Censorship and Vent Frustration Online

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Anyip Mobile Proxies

Shanghai’s rich middle class is leading a wave of online dissent over the strict and prolonged lockdowns imposed in various parts of the country. Chinese internet censorship is struggling as patience is wearing thin in many urban centers, coming up with creative forms of online protests.

Social Media Posts Revealing Lockdown Tension in Shanghai

Drawn-out lockdowns are nothing new in China as authorities insist with the nation’s zero-Covid policy since the start of the pandemic. Currently over This time around, however, metropolitan areas like Shanghai are increasingly difficult to keep quiet, given that its more than 25 million residents have seen weeks of total isolation along with food shortages and many other service interruptions.

Dozens of towns and reportedly over 300 million Chinese citizens have been affected by lockdowns of different severity. As expected, urban netizens have been most outspoken over their difficulties by finding creative ways to get around state censorship and bans placed on topics, news comments and spontaneous campaigns.

Shanghai residents have been using mobile proxies and hijacking seemingly unrelated hashtags to talk about healthcare issues, delivery failures and the overall severity of their situation. The “positive energy” that the Chinese government wants to transmit during the recent prolonged series of lockdowns does not come naturally to those counting food supplies and online censors are working hard to filter words, trending topics and undesired social media sharing.

WeChat groups and message threads are under constant monitoring. Posts questioning the zero-Covid approach have been quickly deleted, including by leading Chinese health experts like Dr. Zhong Nanshan. Video footage is soon censored and protests and investigations are quickly made to disappear.

Where this has not worked, officials have exposed banners with warnings and outright threats like “watch your own mouth or face punishment”, while drones have been patrolling the city skies. Yet, if anything, this has led to further tensions and unspoken confrontation with Shanghai’s educated and affluent middle class.

Creative Online Solutions Harnessing Civic Energy

Announcements by Chinese social media that they would be publishing the IP addresses of users who “spread rumors” have not helped either. Tech industry research has shown that much of Asia’s tech-savvy population has a habit of using mobile proxies and other privacy tools, quickly finding workarounds to browse the internet freely and talk to the world about the hottest topics.

The sheer volume of forbidden posts is already a challenge for the very censorship system, experts explain. Unable to track all trending hashtags, state workers overlook topics that speak about the US, Ukraine or other popular news. Linking human rights elsewhere to their situation, Chinese online dissidents establish their informal channels and “hijack” the conversation to share personal or publicly relevant information about the Covid suppression in their town.

Sarcastic and satirical posts still dominate. Others hope to evade the censors by replacing words from famous poems or the national anthem. One thing is certain – social media, when harnessed with the right creativity, has proven its ability to mount pressure on the government in even some of the most strictly controlled tech environments like China.

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