US presidential primaries: Majority Republicans prefer someone else over Trump, says poll

A majority of Republican voters - 52% - 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% - 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% backing Hillary Clinton, Politico reported citing the poll as saying.

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

 

Moderate Republicans split at 49% each, while 58% of Republicans who have a high-school education or less said they were satisfied. 60% 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% to 23%).

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

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

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% points.