Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 7 points in one poll, trails in another

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is leading Donald Trump by seven percentage points, a latest poll has said, while another survey projected her trailing the Republican candidate by a wafer-thin one point margin.

A Suffolk University/USA Today poll of voters likely to cast ballots in the November presidential election, put Clinton 7 points above Trump nationwide.

Clinton (48 percent) led Trump (41 percent), with nine per cent of respondents undecided in the two-way ballot test, a media release said.

In a four-way scenario that includes Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein, Clinton maintained a seven-point advantage — 42 percent to Trump's 35 per cent. Johnson was at 9 per cent while Stein was at 4 per cent, with 10 per cent respondents undecided.

"Clinton is fuelled by strong support from the East and West Coast regions and by women across the nation," said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Centre in Boston. "But her commanding lead among minority voters gives her a solid advantage no matter how you slice it."

The former secretary of state led Trump 54 per cent to 38 per cent among women, 92 per cent to four per cent among African-American voters and 65 per cent to 24 per cent among Hispanic voters.

She was ahead in the Northeast by 58 per cent to 34 per cent and in the West 52 per cent to 37 per cent, the polls said.

However, in the right-leaning Rasmussen polls, Clinton for the first time is seen trailing Trump, albeit by just one percentage point.

Trump has 40 per cent support to Clinton's 39 per cent, Rasmussen said.

According to RealClearPolitics.Com, which keeps tracks of all major national polls, Clinton is leading Trump by 4.9 percentage points in the average of all major polls.

The 2016 US presidential elections will be held on November 8. Trump and Clinton are the two major candidates.

Clinton (68) is aiming to break the highest glass ceiling in the US by becoming the first woman to be elected as its president.

Seventy-year-old Trump is a real estate billionaire from New York and a realty television star who joined politics only about a year ago.