hillary clinton holds a 4-point lead over donald trump in the waning days of a volatile campaign that has left many voters dissatisfied with both candidates and the political system, a new wall street journal/nbc news poll found. voters, facing a lesser-of-two-evils choice, have ended up more worried about the republican nominee<u+2019>s temperament than about mrs. clinton<u+2019>s email controversy, the poll found. but the race is tightening as republicans rally behind their nominee at the 11th hour. the poll found that 44% of likely voters support mrs. clinton, while 40% back mr. trump. some 6% support libertarian candidate gary johnson and 2% support green party candidate jill stein. after such a long and vitriolic campaign, the new president will face a distrustful electorate. about half of likely voters in the survey said they wouldn<u+2019>t be comfortable and prepared to support the new president, regardless of who wins. <u+201c>the postelection period could be as divisive and bitter as the campaign itself,<u+201d> said fred yang, a democratic pollster who conducted the survey with republican bill mcinturff. <u+201c>our poll shows that no one feels good about this election, and that a sizable number may not accept the outcome.<u+201d> many voters feel ashamed of the political spectacle: nearly two-thirds said the campaign made them feel less proud of america. nearly six out of 10 said they were dissatisfied with the choice of candidates<u+2014>far higher than the 28% who said that in 2012 about the choice between president barack obama and gop nominee mitt romney. all that makes it unlikely the new president will get much of a honeymoon. <u+201c>we<u+2019>re watching something that we haven<u+2019>t seen before and it<u+2019>s pretty grim,<u+201d> said mr. mcinturff. <u+201c>the bump we<u+2019>re used to seeing for the new winner, the coming together, all of the things we have become used to seeing are hard to imagine ahead after this person wins.<u+201d> mrs. clinton<u+2019>s 4-point lead is less than half the 11-point edge she enjoyed in a mid-october journal/nbc news survey , which was taken before the federal bureau of investigation announced it had found a batch of emails that could be pertinent to its investigation of the private email server mrs. clinton used while secretary of state. on sunday, mr. comey said no new evidence had been found in the additional emails to warrant charges against mrs. clinton. he said the bureau stands by its july decision not to recommend charges against mrs. clinton or her aides for potential loss or mishandling of classified material. much of the change from mid-october comes from mr. trump winning an increased share of the vote within his own party, which brought him on par with mrs. clinton<u+2019>s support among democrats. the new poll found that, in the four-candidate field, 82% of republican likely voters supported mr. trump, while 82% of democratic likely voters supported mrs. clinton. mr. trump<u+2019>s economic populism has failed to gain the traction he hoped for among independent voters, who favor mrs. clinton by 2 points. when asked about a key part of his message<u+2014>the idea that the political and economic systems are stacked against <u+201c>people like me<u+201d><u+2014>54% of republicans agreed, but just 43% of democrats and 45% of independents bought the idea. <u+201c>trump tried to do something: to take his brand of populism and reach into the middle<u+201d> of the political spectrum, said micah roberts, another gop pollster who helped conduct the survey. <u+201c>it didn<u+2019>t work.<u+201d> the poll found that voters are splitting along racial, gender and educational lines more deeply than ever. mr. trump is drawing heavily among whites, men and voters without a four-year college degree. mrs. clinton is dominating among nonwhites, women and people with a college education. as mr. trump has made progress toward uniting his party, he has also expanded the party<u+2019>s appeal to working-class, white voters. he leads mrs. clinton by 32 points among that group, compared with the 25-point advantage that election day exit polls found for mr. romney in 2012. mr. trump<u+2019>s strength among these voters helps explain the rationale behind his recent travels to seemingly long-shot states such as michigan and minnesota, where working-class, white voters are plentiful, mr. mcinturff said. mr. trump is falling short among other groups that mr. romney won. mr. romney won independents by 5 percentage points; mr. trump is behind by 2 points. mr. romney won by 14 points among white voters with four-year college degrees; mr. trump lags behind by 7. among hispanics, mr. romney drew 27%<u+2014>a share so low that it raised concerns among republicans about the party<u+2019>s future with that fast-growing demographic group. but the journal/nbc poll of hispanics found mr. trump is drawing only 20%. in a measure of the strength of the clinton campaign<u+2019>s get-out-the-vote effort, the poll found that mrs. clinton leads by 12 percentage points among people who say they had already voted. some 51% of early voters support mrs. clinton; 39% support mr. trump. that locked-in vote edge could help her absorb any additional news developments involving her emails. however, few voters say that any late-breaking news is changing their vote. asked if anything they had learned in the last week led them to reconsider their vote, 90% said no, and that they were just as certain as they were a month ago. moreover, the poll found, the questions about mr. trump<u+2019>s character and values raised over the course of the campaign loomed larger as concerns than did mrs. clinton<u+2019>s use of a private email server. nearly half of likely voters said her use of the private server was a <u+201c>strongly important factor<u+201d> in their decision about voting; 44% said the disclosure that the fbi was pursuing new evidence in the case was <u+201c>strongly important.<u+201d> but more than two-thirds said that questions about whether mr. trump had the right temperament to be commander in chief was <u+201c>strongly important<u+201d> in their decision, and 56% cited his comments and language about women, immigrants and muslims as important. whichever candidate wins will have a hard time uniting the country, after they both have spent so much time warning about the dire consequences of electing the rival. asked if they would be comfortable and prepared to support mr. trump as their president, more than half of likely voters<u+2014>54%<u+2014>said they wouldn<u+2019>t. some 43% said they would support him as president. mrs. clinton would have somewhat broader appeal if she won, but 46% said they wouldn<u+2019>t be comfortable and prepared to support her. some 52% said they would back her. that is a much higher level of postelection unease than even in the bitter 2000 fight between democrat al gore and republican george w. bush. in journal/nbc news polling in the week after that election<u+2014>which ultimately was decided by the supreme court<u+2014>about two-thirds of voters said they would support mr. gore as president; more than two-thirds said the same about mr. bush. the tumultuous 2016 campaign is taking a toll on other institutions: the news media<u+2019>s coverage was deemed <u+201c>fair and balanced<u+201d> by just 29% of likely voters, down from 44% when the question was asked during the 1996 campaign. and the fbi, which was viewed favorably by 48% of registered voters in june 2016, before the agency became publicly enmeshed in the clinton email controversy, was viewed positively by just 38% in the latest poll. the new journal/nbc news poll surveyed 1,282 likely voters from nov. 3-5. the margin of error was plus or minus 2.73 percentage points. write to janet hook at janet.hook@wsj.com
hillary clinton leads donald trump by 4 points in latest poll - wsj
janet hook