US Elections 2016: Clinton ahead of Trump by 6 points in latest opinion poll

Washington: Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton is leading by six points in a hypothetical presidential election match against Donald Trump of Republican Party, according to a latest opinion poll.

However, both Clinton and Trump have very high unfavourable ratings in the CBS News/New York Times poll released on Thursday night. Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont is the only one of the three presidential candidates left in the race to have a better positive rating and defeats Trump by a bigger margin of 13 percentage points in a hypothetical match up.

In its latest poll, The New York Times and CBS News said Clinton (47%) leads Trump (41%) by six percentage points among registered voters if the elections were held now. According to the poll, both Clinton (52%) and Trump (55%) remain highly unpopular among the voters.

For Sanders, his unfavourable rating is just 33%. "When compared to past major party presidential candidates at a similar point in the election cycle, Trump and Clinton's unfavourable ratings continue to be the highest in CBS News/New York Times polls going back to 1984, when the question was first asked," the survey result said.

According to the survey, neither Trump nor Clinton has a clear advantage on handling the economy or on being the nation's commander-in-chief. About half of voters expressed at least some confidence in each to manage the economy or direct the country's military, but about half say they are not too or not at all confident in either candidate, it said. This poll was conducted by telephone May 13-17, 2016 among a random sample of 1,300 adults nationwide, including 1,109 registered voters.