A plurality of voters say Donald Trump is the presidential candidate best equipped to take on ISIS, a new poll finds, with just two out of every five respondents trusting a former secretary of state with the task more than the real estate mogul.
Trump, who has said he would “knock the hell out of ISIS in some form,” gets 49 support in a question of registered voters from Quinnipiac University asking which major presidential nominee would be “most effective” against the terror group. Clinton, whose most recent role in government was in President Obama’s State Department, receives only 41 percent.
Among independents, the split is 48-37 percent in favor of Trump.
However, voters side with Clinton when it comes to handling other incidents labeled an “international crisis”. 53 percent of respondents say Clinton would do the best job responding to such an event, against 40 percent for Trump. The split is even more pronounced in Clinton’s favor when it comes to handling nuclear weapons, at 55 to 33 percent.
The poll sample was split on who to trust most in decisions to deploy American troops for combat.
The Quinnipiac survey of 1,561 registered voters found Clinton with a four-point edge, 45-41 percent, in a two-way race for president. That narrows to 40 to 38 percent when including the Libertarian and Green party nominees for president.
