Voter confidence

Poll: Voter confidence in Clinton grows after convention

By Nick Gass

Hillary Clinton has picked up significant ground on Donald Trump when it comes to a variety of personal and policy-related issues, particularly foreign policy, according to the results of a CNN/ORC poll released Tuesday that was conducted in the days after the Democratic National Convention.

Nearly six in 10 registered voters—59 percent—said Clinton is better prepared to handle foreign policy issues, while 36 percent said the same of Trump. In the last CNN/ORC survey conducted after the Republican National Convention, Clinton held a narrower five-point lead of 50 percent to 45 percent on the issue. Results from the survey released Monday showed Clinton with a lead of 52 percent to 43 percent when matched head to head against the Republican nominee.

The survey was conducted between last Friday and Sunday, largely before the airing of Trump's ABC interview in which he stated that Russia had not already invaded Ukraine but after the Clinton campaign blamed the Kremlin for the hack of the Democratic National Committee's servers. Nearly six in 10 registered voters—58 percent—said they see Russia as unfriendly (37 percent) or even as an enemy (21 percent). Another 31 percent said they considered Russia friendly with the United States, while just 8 percent found the country to be an ally.

On the issue of the DNC hack, which U.S. intelligence officials have said they are confident came from Russia, 61 percent said the larger issue is that Russian hackers were able to hack into the DNC and steal its emails and could release more. The other option presented to registered voters, that Trump suggested last week that Russian hackers should target Clinton's emails to uncover her 33,000 deleted emails, was seen as the bigger concern by 31 percent. Another 7 percent said they had no opinion on the issue.

Clinton grabbed the lead or is within the margin of error on a number of public policy issues from the last survey after the RNC, including on the economy (50 percent to 48 percent; 43 percent to 54 percent for Trump in the last poll), terrorism (48 percent to 48 percent; 42 percent to 53 percent in the last poll), immigration (55 percent to 43 percent; 48 percent to 47 percent in the last poll), health care (56 percent to 41 percent; 54 percent to 40 percent in the last poll), on fighting the Islamic State (48 percent to 47 percent; 40 percent to 53 percent in the last poll).

The poll was conducted July 29-31 via landlines and cellphones, surveying 894 registered voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.