US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s lead over her Republican rival Donald Trump has jumped to double digits standing at 14 percent, a new poll shows.
The NBC News-Wall Street Journal survey released on Monday is the first poll carried out since the releases of recordings in which Trump made lewd remarks about women.
In a two-way race, Clinton now enjoys 52 percent of support compared to 38 percent Trump has among likely voters nationally, the poll shows.
In a four-way matchup, which includes Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Clinton has 46 percent support against 35 percent of Trump.
Johnson and Stein have 9 and 2 percent respectively, according to the poll which was conducted on Saturday and Sunday, but before the second debate between Clinton and Trump on Sunday night.
Forty-nine percent of voters said they favored Democrats, compared to 42 percent who wanted Republicans in
power on Capitol Hill.
Overall, voters were split over the effects of leaked recordings of Trump, with less than a quarter of Republicans saying that it should be a good reason for other GOP Senate and House candidates to stop supporting Trump (9 percent) or ask him to drop out of the race (14 percent.)
Fifty-two percent said that the tape should be viewed as a serious issue, while 42 percent believed it should not be an issue.
Although 31 percent of responders said Trump's comments were "inappropriate, but typical of how some men talk in private with other men," 41 percent said the remarks were "completely unacceptable."
On Friday, The Washington Post released an 11-year-old video which contains Trump’s lewd comments about women. He is heard making a conversation about trying to have sex with a married woman.
Also, a new batch of recordings from Howard Stern’s radio shows was aired Saturday by CNN, showing Trump’s crude and demeaning conversations about women, even his comments about his daughter’s physique.
CNN published 18 clips from appearances the celebrity businessman made on the radio show, which include explicit language boasting sexual harassment of women.