A collection of U.S. political surveys this week shows Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is pulling ahead of Republican challenger Donald Trump five months before November's national election.
Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state seeking to become the country's first female president, holds an average 5.6-percentage-point lead in several polls over the brash real estate mogul who overtook a large Republican field of candidates, many of them current or former senators and governors, in his first bid for elected office.
All of the surveys were conducted after Clinton, the wife of former President Bill Clinton, became her party's presumptive nominee last week after a lengthy battle with her lone party challenger, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Trump, who joined the presidential race a year ago Thursday, also enjoyed growing support, at least for a time, when he became the presumptive Republican nominee in early May as his last challengers dropped out of the race.
Reactions to Orlando massacre
Almost all of the recent polling was conducted before an American-born Muslim carried out the country's worst-ever mass shooting early Sunday at an Orlando, Florida gay nightclub, killing 49 people and wounding 53. It is not clear how that might affect voters' perceptions of Clinton and Trump of how they would deal with such an attack were they elected president, with both of them responding in divergent ways after the extent of the carnage became known.
Trump, calling for the U.S. to be tough on terrorists, used the massacre to renew his call to temporarily block Muslims from entering the country for fear they might commit a new attack, although the Orlando shooter was a U.S. citizen and would not have been affected by his proposal. Authorities say the shooter, killed by police as they raided the nightclub, was radicalized by jihadist tracts he saw on the Internet.
Clinton denounced Trump's anti-Muslim plan and his call to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border to halt undocumented immigrants from entering the United States.
"I don’t know how one builds a wall to keep the Internet out," Clinton said. "So not one of Donald Trump’s reckless ideas would have saved a single life in Orlando. It’s just more evidence that he is temperamentally unfit and totally unqualified to be commander-in-chief.”
Muslim cooperation essential
Clinton, the top U.S. diplomat from 2009 to 2013, said, "We rely on partners in majority-Muslim countries to help us fight terrorists. We need to build trust in Muslim communities here at home to counter radicalization in the lone wolf phenomenon.”
The latest CBS News poll showed Clinton ahead of Trump, 43 percent to 37 percent. With Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson added to the mix, Clinton polled at 39 percent among registered voters, with Trump at 32 percent and Johnson at 11 percent.
Also this week, a Bloomberg News survey showed Clinton with a 49-37 percent lead over Trump, with Johnson at 9 percent. An NBC News/Survey Monkey tracking poll pegged Clinton's edge at 42-38 percent over Trump and Johnson at 9 percent, while a Guardian/SurveyUSA poll had the race with Clinton at 39 percent, Trump at 36 percent and Johnson at 6 percent.
via Voice of America http://ift.tt/1rshKpf
No comments:
Post a Comment