Trump, Clinton Hold Big National Leads

GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump holds an 18% lead and Hillary Clinton holds a 15% lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic race for the nomination.

That is according to the latest poll conducted by NBC News/SurveyMonkey Jan. 4-10 among 9,746 adults 18-plus, 8,655 of them registered voters.

Among registered voters, Trump has 38% of Republicans to Cruz's 20% and Rubio at 11%, while Clinton has 52% of Democrats to Sanders' 26%.

Dr. Ben Carson is in fourth place at 9%, followed by Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and Rand Paul with each just 3%.

And on a State of the Union note, going into the President's last SOTU speech Tuesday (Jan. 12), 45% of the respondents said they approved of how he was handling his job while 54% did not.

The margin of error for the registered voters sample was plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.

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.