Donald Trump trails Hillary Clinton by 9 points with three weeks to go until Election Day, according to a new CBS News national poll that also found an increasing numbers of voters are dismayed by the current scandals engulfing both candidates’ campaigns.
Clinton leads Trump 47-38 among likely voters nationwide. Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson draws 8 percent, and 3 percent of voters back the Green Party’s Jill Stein.
Fifty-four percent of respondents in the poll said the Republican presidential nominee, who was recently caught making lewd comments about women in an audio tape from 2005, still views women in a similar light today, despite his apology for the sexually explicit remarks. Trump has dismissed several allegations of sexual assault against him in the weeks since the audio tape was released.
A majority of Republican voters seem to agree with the Trump campaign’s categorizing his comments as “locker room talk.” Sixty-six percent of GOP respondents indicated that what Trump said on the tape with outgoing “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush were typical of how men sometimes talk about women. Sixty-nine percent of Democrats rejected that notion.
In the aftermath of the tape and sexual assault allegations, 46 percent of women voters think Trump has zero respect for women, a 15-point increase since last month.
Meanwhile, new revelations about what Clinton said in her paid speeches to elite financial firms has a majority of registered voters (52 percent) saying she should release the full transcripts. In Clinton campaign emails released by WikiLeaks, excerpts show the former secretary of state praising a world with “open trade” and “open borders” and touting her strategy of maintaining public and private positions on certain issues.
Sixty percent of voters said the comments Clinton made in her speeches to Wall Street have had no impact on their opinion of her, but another 66 percent said the Democratic presidential hopeful has a habit of saying what people want to hear as opposed to what she believes. Meanwhile, nearly 60 percent of voters think Trump says what he believes.
The survey of 1,189 registered voters across the country was conducted from Oct. 12-15, following the second presidential debate in St. Louis, Mo. Results contain a margin of error plus or minus 3 percentage points.
