Hillary Clinton ties or trails Republicans in new poll

With less than a month to go before the first nominating contests in the US presidential race, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz lead the Republican pack, while Hillary Clinton has a commanding lead among the Democrats.

But in hypothetical head-to-head matchups, Clinton currently ties or trails the Republicans in each of the possible 2016 matchups tested, according to a new Fox News poll.

Real estate mogul and reality TV star Trump tops Clinton by three points (47-44 percent) and former Florida governor Jeb Bush ties at 44 percent each.

But Senators Marco Rubio (50-41 percent) and Ted Cruz (50-43 percent) perform best against the presumptive Democratic nominee. Rubio has a nine-point advantage and Cruz is up by seven.

Among Republican primary voters, Trump leads with 35 percent. Next is Cruz with 20 percent support. Rubio is third at 13 percent, while retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson is at 10 percent and Bush gets four percent.

Last month, it was Trump 39 percent, Cruz 18 percent, Rubio 11 percent, and Carson 9 percent.

On the Democratic side, former secretary of state Clinton commands 54 percent support for the nomination among Democratic primary voters, far outperforming Vermont senator Bernie Sanders at 39 percent. Former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley gets 3 percent.

While most Democratic primary voters are satisfied with their candidate choices (62 percent), many wish they had other options (38 percent) -- including 42 percent of Sanders supporters, and even 33 percent of Clinton supporters.

If the two current front-runners were to prevail as their respective party's nominees, voters would watch both with a high degree of suspicion: 62 percent say Clinton is not honest and trustworthy, and 55 percent think the same of Trump.

Democratic primary voters want the next president to be someone "who knows how to get things done in Washington" (70 percent) rather than someone "who is ready to shake things up in Washington" (28 percent).

Views among Republican primary voters are more divided: 51 percent get things done vs. 45 percent shake things up.

Trump accused former president Bill Clinton of having a "terrible record of women abuse." Trump claimed that nobody has more respect for women than he does.

Voters don't see it that way. By a 50-37 percent margin, voters think Bill Clinton is more respectful of women than Trump. Women say Clinton is more respectful by 55-31 percent.

Eighty-five percent of Democrats think Clinton is more respectful, while 68 percent of Republicans say Trump is -- including 66 percent of Republican women.

Among independents, 41 percent say Clinton, 34 percent say Trump and another 20 percent think there's no difference.

Overall, voters are twice as likely to say Bill Clinton's sex scandals have done more to hurt Hillary's political career: 46 percent say hurt vs. 21 percent help. Another 29 percent say they haven't made a difference.

Men and women are about equally likely to say the scandals have done more to hurt than help.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)