A new poll conducted before the second presidential debate of 2016—but after the release of a tape in which Donald Trump bragged that his celebrity status allowed him to grope women without their consent—shows Hillary Clinton with a double-digit lead over her Republican rival.
The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that in a four-way match-up including Green Party nominee Jill Stein and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, Clinton has an 11-point lead among likely voters over Trump—46 percent to 35 percent. Johnson had nine percent and Stein 2 percent.
In the same poll conducted in September, Clinton had a 6-point lead over Trump—43 percent to 37 percent.
Presented with a two-way match-up, Clinton has a 14-point lead over Trump, with the former secretary of state receiving 52 percent to Trump's 38 percent.
In the 2005 video, published Friday by the Washington Post, Trump is heard telling a "giggling" TV host, Billy Bush, that "when you're a star...you can do anything," including kissing women without their consent or grabbing their genitalia.
Asked about the lewd comments during Sunday's presidential debate, Trump said he was "very embarrassed" but defended himself by saying, "it's locker room talk."
But it isn't, according to some current and former professional athletes. Jacob Tamme, a tight end for the Atlanta Falcons, for example, tweeted, "Please stop saying 'locker room talk,'" and, "It's not normal. And even if it were normal, it's not right." He added Monday: "The attempt to normalize it as any type of 'talk' is wrong. I refuse to let my son think that this is 'just how men speak.'"
The poll showed that 67 percent of Republican voters say that, in light of the lewd comments, GOP candidates for Congress should still back Trump as their party's candidate; only 9 percent said they should withdraw their support.
Speaking about the fallout on MSNBC's "All In With Chris Hayes" on Friday, conservative talk-radio host Charlie Sykes said, "I don't know how any politician stands next to him and justifies in any way saying, 'Okay, yes. The man is talking about sexually assaulting women, groping women, but we should still make him the president of the United States."
Reporting on how this incident has finally sparked many Republicans to denounce Trump's sexism, NPR writes: "Although Trump is bragging about his behavior, the aggressive sexual encounters he describes amount to a level of sexual assault. In many states, they could be punishable with imprisonment. For many Republican officials and other notables, this is not a tipping point but a breaking point."
The new poll of 500 registered voters was conducted Oct. 8-9. It has a 4.6 percent margin of error for likely voters.
