Polls Show Clinton Gaining Ground Over Trump

Two new polls released Sunday show Hillary Clinton's lead over presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump is growing with one poll giving her a tight lead while the other puts her comfortably ahead with a double-digit lead.

In a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, Trump is five percentage points behind Clinton, but the race is essentially tied when factoring in third-party candidates. The polls shows Clinton leading 46-41 over Trump, but that lead drops to one point (39-38) when Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein are included.

The same poll in May had Clinton leading Trump 46-43.

A second Washington Post/ABC News poll shows a much wider lead for Clinton, putting her 12 percentage points ahead with a 51-39 lead over Trump. The same poll conducted last month showed the race statistically tied.

According to the Washington Post, "Roughly two in three Americans say they think Trump is unqualified to lead the nation; are anxious about the idea of him as president; believe his comments about women, minorities and Muslims show an unfair bias; and see his attacks on a federal judge because of his Mexican American heritage as racist."

Trump has come under increased scrutiny lately, beginning with his repeated attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel who ordered documents in the Trump University case to be unsealed. Trump had attacked the judge as being a "Donald Trump hater" and said Curiel may be biased against him because of his Mexican heritage and the wall Trump wants to build to seal the southern U.S. border was an inherent conflict of interest.

Trump's comments were widely disavowed. House Speaker Paul Ryan called the comments "the textbook definition of racism," but said Trump was still better than Clinton.

In the wake of the Orlando shooting, Trump "congratulated" himself for being right on radical Islamic terrorism and repeatedly called out President Obama for not using the term "Radical Islam." The Post/ABC poll showed that by a margin of 18 points more Americans said Clinton had a better overall response than Trump. However, 26 percent of Americans had no preference.

The WSJ/NBC poll showed Clinton leading among Hispanics, women and people in urban areas while Trump commands a lead among men and white voters.

Both polls surveyed registered voters with a +/- 3.5 margin of error for the Post/ABC polls and a +/- 3.1 margin of error for the WSJ/NBC poll.

Image Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr Creative Commons