Real estate mogul Donald Trump continues to be the top presidential candidate among Republican voters and a new CNN/ORC poll shows little appetite for replacing the front-runner with another candidate at the convention or through a third party run,
CNN reports.
According to the poll:
- 47 percent of Republican want to see Trump win;
- 31 percent of Republicans want to see Texas Sen. Ted Cruz win;
- 12 percent of Republicans want to see Ohio Gov. John Kasich win;
In terms of enthusiasm, Trump also leads the field:
- Trump, 40 percent;
- Cruz, 28 percent;
- Kasich, 19 percent;
In the race for the Democratic nomination, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continues to top Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders:
- Clinton, 51 percent;
- Sanders, 44 percent;
However, in hypothetical general election matchups, the poll shows both Democratic candidates top Trump by a wide margin:
- Sanders tops Trump by 20 points.
- Clinton tops Trump by 12 points.
The poll notes Sanders also fares better than Clinton in hypothetical matchups against the remaining Republican candidates:
- Sanders tops Cruz by 13 points;
- Sanders tops Kasich by 13 points;
Meanwhile, Clinton runs even with Cruz and is behind Kasich by 6 points.
The CNN/ORC poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone March 17-20 among a random national sample of 1,001 adults.
The results include interviews with 478 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who are registered to vote, as well as 397 Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters.
The results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, it is 4.5 points for the Democratic voters' sample and 5 points for the Republican voter sample.