Majority Republicans prefer someone else over Trump: Poll

Washington, June 28 (IANS) A majority of Republican voters - 52 per cent - said they would have preferred someone else other than Donald Trump as their party's presidential nominee, a new poll has revealed.

Less than half - 45 percent - of Republican voters said they were satisfied with Trump, according to the latest results from an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll released Monday.

On the Democratic side, the numbers are reversed with 52 per cent backing Hillary Clinton, Politico reported citing the poll as saying.

Among conservative Republicans, 53 per cent said they would have preferred a candidate other than Trump, while 45 per cent of that group said they were fine with the Manhattan real-estate mogul as the nominee.

Moderate Republicans split at 49 per cent each, while 58 per cent of Republicans who have a high-school education or less said they were satisfied. Sixty per cent with a college degree said they would like someone else.

On the issues, a majority of voters said Trump would be better than Clinton at "changing business as usual in Washington" (53 per cent to 23 per cent).

Trump also led on economic issues (47 per cent to 37 per cent), "standing up for America" (45 per cent to 37 per cent), terrorism and homeland security (44 per cent to 39 per cent), guns (43 per cent to 35 per cent), "being effective at getting things done" (42 per cent to 39 per cent) and "being honest and straight forward" (41 per cent to 25 per cent).

Clinton, meanwhile, led on "having the ability to handle a crisis" (48 per cent to 34 per cent), "having the ability to unite the country" (40 per cent to 26 per cent), "handling foreign policy" (54 per cent to 30 per cent) and "being a good commander in chief" (44 per cent to 32 per cent).

The poll was conducted from June 19-23, surveying 1,000 registered voters by landlines and cellphones, with an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.