Gerry Mullany
Hillary Clinton holds a wide lead over Donald J. Trump in a new national poll that came out shortly after the Manhattan businessman became the presumptive Republican nominee.
The CNN/ORC poll, released Wednesday morning, shows Mrs. Clinton with 54 percent of respondents’ support, compared with 41 percent for Mr. Trump, a lead that is one percentage point above her showing in a similar survey in March.
The poll suggested that Mrs. Clinton’s support is driven heavily by aversion to a Trump candidacy: 51 percent of her supporters say their backing comes more from opposition to Mr. Trump than from a preference for the Democratic candidate. But the same is true for those who said they supported Mr. Trump: 57 percent said their backing was driven by an opposition to Mrs. Clinton.
The poll shows that Mrs. Clinton’s rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, would hold an even wider lead over Mr. Trump than Mrs. Clinton: In a hypothetical matchup, Mr. Sanders would beat Mr. Trump by 16 percentage points, the poll suggested.
Mr. Sanders has seized on his strong performance against Mr. Trump in polls as a main argument for keeping his candidacy alive despite Mrs. Clinton’s lead in delegates.
Both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton hope to clinch their parties’ nominations by getting the required majority of their parties’ delegates by the last round of state contests, on June 7.
The CNN/ORC poll of 1,001 adults had a margin of sampling error of 3.5 percentage points.
Donald Trump Begins to Plot His Post-Nomination Future
By
Maggie Haberman
Donald J. Trump will decide in the next week whether to accept support from “super PACs.” He is leaning toward a conventional political figure as a vice presidential pick. He has not yet spoken with Senator Ted Cruz. And those haters who’ve been the most critical of him? He doesn’t necessarily want their support.
Those were a handful of comments Mr. Trump made in four phone-in interviews on morning TV shows the day after he became the Republican party’s presumptive nominee.
Mr. Trump told the hosts of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, in his first appearance of the day, that he was debating whether to accept support from super PACs. Mr. Trump had made bashing such groups a staple of his campaign stump speeches, and a change to embrace taking unlimited contributions from a single donor would be significant.
“I’m going to be making a decision over the next week,” Mr. Trump said. “The question is, I do love self-funding.”
The real estate developer, who has batted away persistent questions about his net worth by pointing to the financial disclosure statements he has filed, suggested he might continue to spend his own money on an election effort that is very likely to cost more than $1 billion.
“Do I want to sell a couple of buildings and self-fund? I don’t know that i want to do that necessarily, but I really won’t be asking for money for myself, I’ll be asking money for the party,” Mr. Trump added.
Mr. Trump revealed little about how he was going about the vice presidential selection process, but he suggested he could approach someone from the political realm, the military realm or the business realm.
“I have the business — let’s call it talents,” Mr. Trump said. “And I think I’ll probably go the political route, somebody that can help me with legislation and somebody that can help me get things passed and somebody that’s been friends with the senators and the congressman and all.”
He also turned his attention to Hillary Clinton, his probable opponent in the November general election, saying she was being “protected” over the scandal involving her email server by fellow Democrats.
“She should suffer like other people have suffered who have done far less than she has,” Mr. Trump said. “You look at so many, I won’t even mention names anymore. You look at so many people who have done far less than her, the same subject matter, and it’s been a horror show.”
On “Fox and Friends,” Mr. Trump said he had not spoken with Mr. Cruz, whom he savaged for most of the primary, but praised in his primary night speech. He said he was “surprised” that Mr. Cruz had dropped out, but that he did the right thing.
Mr. Trump also said he expected the party to come together, but said that there might be some votes he doesn’t want after all.
“I don’t necessarily want everybody, if you want to know the truth,” Mr. Trump said. “I think I’m a little bit different as a candidate than most.”