National polls

National poll: Clinton, Sanders tighten; Trump approaches 50 percent

By Nick Gass

More than half of Republican and Republican-leaning voters nationwide—52 percent—say they want to see a general election contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, according to the results of the latest online weekly NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll released Tuesday.

The Democratic race, meanwhile, has tightened to six points, while Trump is approaching 50 percent support among Republicans.

Clinton leads Sanders 49 percent to 43 percent, with 8 percent saying they do not know. The former secretary of state has dropped by six points in the survey since the beginning of March, while the Vermont senator has gone up by 5 points in support. In the weekly tracking survey conducted between Feb. 29 and March 6, for example, Clinton led Sanders by 17 points—55 percent to 38 percent.

The latest Democratic results follow a Bloomberg Politics poll released last week that showed Sanders and Clinton locked in a dead heat, 49 percent to 48 percent.

On the Republican side, Trump holds a 21-point lead over Texas Sen. Ted Cruz—48 percent to 27 percent, while Ohio Gov. John Kasich earned 18 percent. Another 7 percent said they did not know. Nearly six-in-10—58 percent—of Republicans said they are "absolutely certain" they will vote for the candidate they selected in their state's primary or caucus. A slightly higher share of Democrats—64 percent—expressed "absolute" certainty about whether they would vote for their candidate.

The poll was conducted online from March 21-27, surveying a total sample of 6,521 adults nationwide with an overall margin of error of plus or minus 1.6 percentage points, including 1,611 Republican registered voters and 1,922 Democratic registered voters, with margins of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points and plus or minus 2.9 percentage points, respectively.