LOUDONVILLE, N.Y. — Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders by 10 points and Donald Trump tops John Kasich by 23 points and Ted Cruz by 33 points in a new Siena College poll of likely New York state presidential primary voters released today.
The New York primary will be held Tuesday, April 19.
Sanders, the Vermont Senator, trails former New York Senator Hillary Clinton among likely Democratic voters by 52 percent to 42 percent. But that’s down from a Clinton lead of 55 percent to 34 percent in a Siena poll released March 7 that polled registered Democrats.
“While Clinton continues to hold a double digit lead over Sanders, the Brooklyn–born Sanders has tightened the race in the last month over Clinton, the twice-elected former United States Senator from New York. Sanders has widened his lead among voters under 35 to a whopping 52 points, up from 17 points, while Clinton leads among voters over 55 by 22 points, although that’s down from a 39-point lead with older voters,” Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg said in a news release. “The younger voters are feeling the ‘Bern’ but the question is will they come out and vote in large numbers, as older voters historically do?”
On the Republican side, the businessman and reality TV personality Trump maintains a big lead in his home state, drawing the support of 50 percent of likely Republican voters, compared to 27 percent for the Ohio Governor Kasich and 17 percent for the Texas Senator Cruz, according to the latest Siena poll. In a four-way race in March, Trump led among registered Republicans with 45 percent, followed by Kasich and Marco Rubio at 18 percent each and Cruz at 11 percent.
“Trump looks like he will cruise to victory in his home state, as Cruz did in Texas and Kasich in Ohio. The real question is will he get a majority of Republican votes or simply a very high plurality?,” Greenberg said.
Hitting a majority is key because Trump can sweep all 95 New York delegates to the GOP national convention if he receives 50 percent or more of votes statewide and in each of New York’s 27 Congressional districts. That is important in his quest to try to reach 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the GOP nomination for president.
This latest Siena College Poll was conducted April 6-11, by telephone calls to 538 likely Democratic primary voters and 469 likely Republican primary voters. The margin of error is 4.5 percentage points for Democrats and 5 percentage points for Republicans, Siena said.
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