Clinton’s lead on Trump takes slight hit after Orlando attack

A new poll has shown presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s lead on Republican rival Donald Trump diminished slightly following this week’s shooting attack in Orlando, Florida, though it remains in the double digits.

A Reuters/Ipsos survey indicated Clinton leading Trump by 10.7 points, with 45.5 percent of the vote compared to Trump’s 34.8%. A poll published before the terror attack had Clinton leading by 14.3 points — 46.6% to 32.3%.

The poll also showed that 45% of voters now supported Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the country, up from 41.9% earlier this month.

In the aftermath of the shooting, Trump has accused President Barack Obama of putting US enemies ahead of Americans. Trump also has suggested that Obama himself might sympathize with radical elements.

Democrats criticized Trump and some Republicans tried to distance themselves from his remarks.

Clinton quickly challenged Republicans to either “stand up to their presumptive nominee” or “stand by his accusation about our president.”

The White House has avoided commenting on Trump’s attempts to link Obama to terrorism, calling the matter “small.”

Meanwhile Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders told his followers Friday that the priority now was defeating Trump and the bigotry he said the presumptive Republican presidential nominee represented. He pledged to work with Clinton to make sure that happens, although he did not yet withdraw from the race for the Democratic presidential nod.

“The major political task that we face in the next five months is to make certain that Donald Trump is defeated and defeated badly,” Sanders, the Independent senator from Vermont, said in an address live-streamed Thursday evening to his followers marking the end of the primaries campaign. “And I personally intend to begin my role in that process in a very short period of time.”

Sanders, the first Jewish candidate to win major party nominating contests, noted his differences with Clinton on some issues, but, in a shift, emphasized that the greater threat was Trump, the real estate magnate whose securing of the Republican nomination has roiled the presidential race with accusations that his campaign is undergirded by bigotry.

“After centuries of racism, sexism and discrimination of all forms in our country we do not need a major party candidate who makes bigotry the cornerstone of his campaign,” Sanders said. “We cannot have a president who insults Mexicans and Latinos, Muslims, women and African-Americans. We cannot have a president who, in the midst of so much income and wealth inequality, wants to give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the very rich. We cannot have a president who, despite all of the scientific evidence, believes that climate change is a hoax.”

AP and JTA contributed to this report.