New national poll shows Trump almost even with Clinton

Now the sole Republican candidate in the contest after his remaining rivals dropped out last week, Donald Trump has surged in a new poll, coming closer to the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, than ever before.

The two are now running nearly neck and neck among likely US voters, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll.

The survey found that 41 percent of likely voters support Clinton, while 40% back Trump. Nineteen percent are still undecided.

The online poll of 1,289 people was conducted from Friday to Tuesday and has a margin of error of three percentage points.

Trump scored two more primary victories Tuesday night in West Virginia and Nebraska, claiming 92% of the delegates he needs to clinch the nomination. He has the field to himself, but after having nearly closed the deal with primary voters, the presumptive nominee is facing a Republican establishment that is deeply wary of his candidacy, but has nowhere else to go.

On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders scored a decisive victory over Hillary Clinton in West Virginia, winning about 51% of the vote to her 36%. But the win did little to advance his fading prospects. Clinton is 94% of the way to the nomination, on track to capture it in early June.

Trump is transitioning from the fierce primary battles with the likes of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio to a general election showdown with Clinton, even amid deep Republican anxiety about the celebrity billionaire.

With Republican concern about their nominee sizzling, a Quinnipiac University poll out Tuesday showed Trump closing in on Clinton’s lead in two major battleground states — Florida and Pennsylvania — and overtaking her in swing state Ohio.

No candidate has won the presidential election without taking at least two of those three states.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell seized on the polls, telling reporters, “the early indications are that our nominee is likely to be very competitive.”

Quinnipiac’s poll also found that Sanders, a democratic socialist who commands an enthusiastic following on the left, would do better against Trump than Clinton in all three states if he were the Democratic nominee.

The 74-year-old Vermont senator has mounted an unyielding come-from-behind challenge that has exposed weaknesses in the former secretary of state’s campaign.

Although almost certain to win the Democratic nomination — she is only about 160 delegates short of that goal — Clinton’s ability to excite young and white working-class Democrats going into the general election has been put in doubt by Sanders’s primary successes.

While Clinton still has Sanders to worry about, Trump faces a rebellion within the Republican leadership over the insulting tone and shifting substance of his candidacy.

House Speaker Paul Ryan last week announced he was “not ready” to support Trump, a rare rebuke that put the power struggles within the Republican Party on very public display.

Ryan and other Republican congressional leaders were due to huddle with Trump Thursday in Washington in highly anticipated meetings that could help gauge GOP support for the real estate tycoon.

Trump appeared to offer an olive branch late on Tuesday, saying he wants Ryan to remain chairman of the Cleveland convention.

“I’d love frankly for him to stay and be chairman,” he told Fox News.

The Republican establishment is still reeling from Trump’s hostile takeover of the party, aghast at positions he’s taken on trade, foreign policy and taxes that fly in the face of conservative dictums.

But Trump has shown no sign of backing down as some Republicans are looking to heal, embrace the nominee and turn to defeating Clinton in November.