Poll: Trump, Clinton hold double-digit NY leads

Presidential front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton hold substantial leads over their primary rivals in New York just over a week before the state’s April 19 primary elections.

Trump’s lead is larger — a 33-point gap over the GOP field in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll of his home state released Monday. Trump holds 54 percent support from the likely Republican primary voters surveyed, compared to 21 percent for Ohio Gov. John Kasich and 18 percent for Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas). That’s largely in line with most recent polling, which shows Trump with the big lead.

{mosads}New York represents the second-largest prize left on the calendar, with 95 GOP delegates — 14 to the statewide winner and the remaining 81 divided up by winner of congressional districts, three per district.

Trump’s margin is important, as he stands to win all three delegates in any district where he hits 50 percent. If not, he’ll split the delegates with the second-place finisher.

On the Democratic side, Clinton leads Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), 55 percent to 41 percent, similar to a Monmouth University poll released earlier Monday.

Sanders has made a strong push to knock Clinton off of her throne in her adopted home state, but anything short of a major victory there won’t make a substantial dent in Clinton’s delegate lead, since the delegates are all awarded proportionally.

The poll also shows that Sanders’s supporters are less willing to switch candidates if their choice loses. Thirty percent of Sanders supporters said they would not back Clinton in a general election, while only 15 percent of Clinton’s supporters felt the same way about Sanders.

The poll was conducted between April 6 and April 10. The Democratic portion has a margin of error of 4.2 percentage points, while the Republican portion has a margin of error of 6.1 percentage points.