Trump maintains lead in new nationwide poll

Republican presidential contender Donald Trump is leading the race to represent his party in the 2016 presidential election, a new nationwide poll has found.

The Fox News poll released on Thursday showed that 35 percent of the Republican primary voters support the billionaire businessman’s presidential bid.

Next was Senator Ted Cruz of Texas with 20 percent support, followed by Florida Senator Marco Rubio with 13 percent, and former neurosurgeon Ben Carson with 10 percent.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush was the fifth, scoring only 4 percent of the votes.

According to the survey, 48 percent of primary voters were confident that Trump would be most effective in reversing course on President Barack Obama’s policies, more than twice as many as the 21 percent who had a similar idea about Cruz.

On the Democratic side, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was ahead with 54 percent support among Democratic primary voters.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was trailing her at 39 percent.

The poll found that 62 percent of voters think Clinton is not honest and trustworthy, while 55 percent have the same opinion about Trump.

Fox News also surveyed voters about hypothetical head-to-head match-ups between the two parties and found that Trump defeats Clinton by three points, 47 to 44 percent.

Clinton recently called on Americans to roundly reject Trump’s candidacy because of his “dangerous” rhetoric about women, Mexican immigrants and Muslims.

Trump has proposed a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims" entering the United States. The real-estate mogul has also pledged to create a wall on the border with Mexico to keep them from migrating to the US.

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