A new poll finds presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton with a towering lead over her likely Republican counterpart, Donald Trump.
The ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Sunday gives Mrs. Clinton a 12-percentage point advantage among likely voters nationwide, besting Mr. Trump 51 percent to 39 percent.
The same poll in May showed Mr. Trump with a 2-percentage point edge on the former secretary of state, 46 to 44 percent.
Roughly two-thirds of the respondents said the billionaire businessman is unqualified to lead the country, including one-third of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. Nearly two-thirds of voters, by contrast, said Mrs. Clinton is qualified to be president.
Yet 64 percent of voters who want the nation to move in a different direction prefer Mr. Trump, compared to 26 percent who are backing Mrs. Clinton. And after eight years of President Obama, 56 percent of Americans said they want the next president to chart a new course for the country.
The poll comes more than a week after the massacre at the Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where 49 people were killed by a gunman who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
Respondents said they preferred Mrs. Clinton’s response to the terrorist attack to Mr. Trump’s by an 18-percentage point margin.
The poll surveyed 1,001 registered voters from June 20 to 23. It has a plus-or-minus 3.5 percentage point margin of error.
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday gives Mrs. Clinton just a 5-percentage point advantage over Mr. Trump.
• Bradford Richardson can be reached at brichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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