Rasmussen: Clinton, Trump in Dead Heat Nationally

With Tuesday's Indiana primary potentially giving GOP candidate Donald Trump a straight shot to the GOP presidential nomination, a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Trump and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton tied at 38% support. Clinton held a 41% to 36% lead in a similar survey conducted in March.

But if the 6% who say they will sit out the election rather than vote for either are not given that option, Trump edges ahead 41% to 39%, though that is statistically still a dead heat given the 3 percentage point margin of error.

Five percent of the respondents said they were undecided and 15% said they preferred another candidate.

Trump leads among men and Clinton among women. Clinton gets 71% of the black vote while Trump gets only 9%.

Trump got 73% of the Republicans and Clinton 77% of the Democrats, but Trump got 15% of Democrats while Clinton only 8% of the GOP voters.

The poll was conducted April 27-28 for Rasmussen by Pulse Opinion Research among 1,000 likely voters.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.