Fox News Poll: Trump trails Clinton in Colorado

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A Fox News Poll of Colorado registered voters finds Hillary Clinton ahead of Donald Trump by 10 points in the race for the White House.

Clinton’s up 44-34 percent in a head-to-head matchup.  Her lead is outside the poll’s margin of sampling error.

The Democrat maintains her advantage in a hypothetical four-way race: Clinton garners 37 percent, Trump 28 percent, the Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson receives 13 percent, and the Green Party candidate Jill Stein gets 6 percent.

Eighty-one percent of those backing Clinton in the two-way race stick with her in the four-way, six percent defect to Johnson, and four percent to Stein.

For Trump, 79 percent stay with him, while 11 percent go to Johnson and 2 percent to Stein.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL POLL RESULTS

Independents prefer Clinton over Trump in the two-way matchup (36-28 percent).  However in the four-way ballot, Johnson moves ahead of Trump:  Clinton is the choice of 29 percent, Johnson receives 22 percent, Trump 20 percent, and Stein 10 percent.

In the head-to-head matchup, some of Clinton’s best groups include women (52-29 percent), Hispanics (60-15 percent), whites with a college degree (47-30 percent), and voters who are “extremely” interested in the election (50-43 percent).

Groups most likely to back Trump include whites without a college degree (50-34 percent), rural voters (46-36 percent), and white evangelical Christians (58-22 percent).

There’s less party unity for Trump, as just 75 percent of Republicans back him compared to Clinton’s 81 percent among Democrats.

President Barack Obama beat Republican Mitt Romney in 2012 by just over five percentage points in Colorado, while Gary Johnson received about one percent of the vote.  In 2008, Obama won the state by nearly nine points over Republican John McCain.  In the three presidential elections before that, the state voted for the Republican candidate.

Voters say Clinton is better described as having the right temperament, being qualified to be president, and being a strong leader.  Fifty-five percent think the phrase “has the temperament to serve effectively as president” applies to Clinton.  That’s more than twice as many as say the same about Trump (22 percent).

By a 50-24 percent spread, Clinton rather than Trump is seen as qualified to be commander-in-chief.  Plus, voters also say “strong leader” (43-34 percent) and “cares about people like me” (40-29 percent) are traits that better describe her.

Roughly equal numbers say “honest and trustworthy” better describes Trump (28 percent) as feel that way about Clinton (27 percent).  The largest number however, 41 percent, says that phrase applies to neither candidate.

Overall, more voters say the economy (80 percent) will be extremely or very important to their presidential vote than say the same about nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court (66 percent), terrorism (66 percent), government spending (64 percent), a new direction for the country (59 percent), or illegal immigration (46 percent).

Colorado voters think Clinton would do a better job than Trump on the priority issues.

She’s preferred on Supreme Court nominations by a wide 17-point margin (51-34 percent).  Clinton’s also narrowly the choice on terrorism (45-41 percent), illegal immigration (45-44 percent), and the economy (44-43 percent).

"These results are obviously good news for Clinton and ought to give the Trump campaign pause," says Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who conducts the Fox News Poll with Democratic pollster Chris Anderson.

"It's not just that he’s down in the trial ballot.  She also beats him across all relevant issue and trait evaluations.  He needs to significantly improve his image and substantive impressions of where he wants to lead the country."

Trump tops Clinton by 12 points on taking the country in a new direction (46-34 percent) and by one point on government spending (42-41 percent).

Meanwhile, Colorado voters dislike both major party candidates:  58 percent have an unfavorable opinion of Clinton, and 68 percent feel negatively about Trump.

By a 55-32 percent margin, they have a positive opinion of Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper.  Seventy-three percent of Democrats view him favorably.

Hickenlooper met with Clinton July 6 in Denver and confirmed the two spoke about the presumptive nominee’s search for a vice presidential running mate.

Colorado voters also like Obama: 54 percent favorable vs. 44 percent unfavorable.

The Senate Race

In the Colorado Senate race, incumbent Michael Bennet leads his Republican opponent Darryl Glenn by 51-36 percent.

Bennet’s strongest support comes from women (55-29 percent), suburban voters (60-30 percent), and independents (49-32 percent).

Glenn does best among rural voters (46-37 percent), white evangelical Christians (61-26 percent), and those who say terrorism is extremely important (51-30 percent).

Bennet was appointed to the seat in 2009, and won re-election in 2010 by two points.

Eighty-six percent of Clinton supporters back Bennet, while just 73 percent of Trump backers go for Glenn.

The Fox News Poll is conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R).  The poll was conducted July 9-12, 2016, by telephone (landline and cellphone) with live interviewers among a sample of 600 Colorado registered voters selected from a statewide voter file.  Bilingual interviewers were used.  The margin of sampling error is plus or minus four percentage points for the total sample.