Clinton ahead of Trump by seven points, poll suggests

HILLARY Clinton received a four-point increase in support after the Democratic National Convention, and now led Donald Trump by seven points in the race for the White House, a poll indicated yesterday.

According to the CBS News survey, Clinton’s support stood at 46%, and Republican Trump’ s at 39%.

After the Republican convention, prior to last week’s Democratic one, Trump received a two-point increase in support, and the race was tied, CBS said.

One of Clinton’s biggest problems – citizens’ negative view of her – remained, but it had eased since the convention, the poll suggested.

It indicated 50% of voters had a negative opinion of her compared to 36% who viewed her positively, suggesting the positive number was up five points and the negative one down six.

The poll indicated 31% of voters had a positive opinion of Trump, which was about the same number as before the Republican convention.

It suggested 52% of voters viewed him negatively.

The survey, which was carried out between July 29 and 31 among 1 393 adults, had a margin of error of three percentage points.

Meanwhile, Clinton yesterday criticised Trump over his stance on Russia, saying he had “absolute allegiance” to Russian policy aims.

Clinton was responding on Fox News to allegations of Russian involvement in leaks of Democratic Party e-mails that embarrassed her on the eve of the Democratic National Convention.

As that convention was under way‚ Trump urged Russia to find and release several thousand e-mails that disappeared from Clinton’s private server while she was secretary of state.

That call drew sharp rebukes from Democrats and some Republicans.

US cybersecurity experts said the leaks raised questions about whether Russia had attempted to influence the US election campaign in Trump’s favour.

The leaked e-mails revealed the distrust some key Democratic leaders had of Bernie Sanders‚ Clinton’s former rival for the Democratic nod.

Clinton said Trump’s apparent encouragement of Russian hacking “appears to be a deliberate effort to try to affect the election”.

“If you take the encouragement that Russians hack into e-mail accounts‚ if you take his [Trump’s] quite excessive praise for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin‚ his absolute allegiance to a lot of Russian wish-list foreign policy issues‚ [it suggests] he is not temperamentally fit to be president,” Clinton said. – AFP