NEW YORK, (Reuters) – Democrat Hillary Clinton had a four-percentage point advantage in support over Republican Donald Trump ahead of their first U.S. presidential debate, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos national tracking poll released yesterday.
The Sept. 16-22 opinion poll showed that 41 percent of likely voters supported Clinton, while 37 percent supported Trump. Clinton has mostly led Trump in the poll during the 2016 campaign, though her advantage has narrowed since the end of the Democratic and Republican national conventions in July.
With just six weeks before the Nov. 8 election, Monday’s debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York will be the first of three between the White House rivals. It presents a major opportunity for them to appeal to voters who have yet to commit to a candidate after a mostly negative race in which Clinton and Trump have sought to brand each other as untrustworthy and dangerous for the country.
The live, televised matchup is expected to draw a Super Bowl-sized television audience of 100 million Americans, according to some commentators.
Among those watching will be people who so far remain on the fence. This could be a sizable group: Some 22 percent of likely voters said in the latest poll that they do not support either major-party candidate. That was more than twice the proportion of uncommitted voters at the same point in the 2012 election between Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney
