Hillary ties or trails Republicans in new poll

Washington: With less than a month to go before the first nominating contests in the US presidential race, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz lead the Republican pack, while Hillary Clinton has a commanding lead among the Democrats. But in hypothetical head-to-head matchups, Clinton currently ties or trails the Republicans in each of the possible 2016 matchups tested, according to a new Fox News poll.

Real estate mogul and reality TV star Trump tops Clinton by three points (47-44 percent) and former Florida governor Jeb Bush ties at 44 percent each. But Senators Marco Rubio (50-41 percent) and Ted Cruz (50-43 percent) perform best against the presumptive Democratic nominee. Rubio has a nine-point advantage and Cruz is up by seven. Among Republican primary voters, Trump leads with 35 per cent. Next is Cruz with 20 per cent support. Rubio is third at 13 per cent, while retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson is at 10 per cent and Bush gets four per cent. Last month, it was Trump 39 percent, Cruz 18 percent, Rubio 11 percent, and Carson 9 per cent.

On the Democratic side, former secretary of state Clinton commands 54 per cent support for the nomination among Democratic primary voters, far outperforming Vermont senator Bernie Sanders at 39 per cent. Former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley gets 3 per cent. While most Democratic primary voters are satisfied with their candidate choices (62 percent), many wish they had other options (38 per cent) including 42 per cent of Sanders supporters, and even 33 per cent of Clinton supporters.

If the two current front-runners were to prevail as their respective party's nominees, voters would watch both with a high degree of suspicion: 62 per cent say Clinton is not honest and trustworthy, and 55 percent think the same of Trump. Democratic primary voters want the next president to be someone "who knows how to get things done in Washington" (70 percent) rather than someone "who is ready to shake things up in Washington". Views among Republican primary voters are more divided: 51 per cent get things done vs. 45 per cent shake things up.

Trump accused former president Bill Clinton of having a "terrible record of women abuse." Trump claimed that nobody has more respect for women than he does. Voters don't see it that way. By a 50-37 per cent margin, voters think Bill Clinton is more respectful of women than Trump. Women say Clinton is more respectful by 55-31 per cent. Eighty-five per cent of Democrats think Clinton is more respectful, while 68 per cent of Republicans say Trump is including 66 per cent of Republican women.

Among independents, 41 per cent say Clinton, 34 per cent say Trump and another 20 per cent think there's no difference. Overall, voters are twice as likely to say Bill Clinton's sex scandals have done more to hurt Hillary's political career: 46 per cent say hurt vs. 21 per cent help. Another 29 per cent say they haven't made a difference. Men and women are about equally likely to say the scandals have done more to hurt than help.