Trump, Clinton neck and neck, speculative poll finds
If presidential elections were held today, 37% would choose the Democratic hopeful, 36% the Republican candidate
If US elections were held today, leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton would have almost equal support among the voting public, according to a poll published Monday.
The Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found 37 percent would vote for Clinton and 36% for Trump, with a 3% margin of error.
Twenty-two percent said they would vote for another candidate and 5% were undecided.
The results, drawn from the responses of of 1,000 “likely voters” polled on December 22-23, were almost the same as those of a similar survey in October, which gave Trump 38% of the vote and Clinton 36%.
Clinton has a greater standing among Democrats, 75% of whom would vote for her compared to just 63% of Republicans who back Trump. Among unaffiliated voters, Trump had the larger wedge with 36% compared to 25% for Clinton, although 29% said they would choose a different candidate.
Of the men sampled, 41% preferred Trump to 31% for Clinton while a majority of women would go for the Democrat candidate — 42%-31%.
Clinton and Trump are locked in battles for their respective parties’ presidential nominations for the November 2016 elections.
Barely a month before the first votes are cast in the state-by-state nomination process, the top candidates appear to be looking past the primaries and going head to head.
At a rally Monday night in New Hampshire, Trump described a Trump-Clinton general election match-up as “her worst nightmare” and warned rivals against attacking his campaign.
“Every single person that’s gone after me is gone,” he said to applause at a middle school in Nashua.