Hillary Clinton led Donald Trump 42 percent to 40 percent in a new national Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday that showed the two candidates in a much closer race than other recent surveys.
The latest poll represented a dip for the former secretary of state, who led Trump 45 percent to 41 percent in the university’s poll released June 1.
The addition of third party candidates tilts the balance slightly. Clinton takes 39 percent with Trump at 37 percent, Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson at 8 percent, and the Green Party’s Jill Stein at 4 percent.
Both top candidates face negative favorability ratings and dismal reviews from voters.
A majority of respondents—58 percent—said that Trump will not be a good president, compared to 35 percent who think he will. Clinton fared only slightly better, with 53 percent of voters saying she will not serve well in the White House and 43 percent saying she will.
“It would be difficult to imagine a less flattering from-the-gut reaction to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton,” Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said in a press release accompanying the poll.
The survey comes after a month of ominous news including a mass shooting attack in Orlando, Florida, the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union, and suicide bombings at Istanbul’s international airport.
According to Quinnipiac’s survey, 52 percent of voters said that Trump would be more effective than Clinton at handling ISIL, while 39 percent said Clinton would do a better job. Clinton, however, was favored to better respond to an international crisis with 51 percent of the vote compared to Trump’s 42 percent.
The overall results are strikingly different than a slew of recent polls from NBC News/Wall Street Journal, ABC News/Washington Post, Bloomberg, and Monmouth University, all of which showed Clinton with a significant lead over Trump.
The Quinnipiac poll was conducted via telephone from June 21-27 among 1,610 registered voters nationwide. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.
