Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Hold Big Leads in NY In Latest NBC News / WSJ / Marist College

More than 50 percent of voters in each party said they were likely to vote for their party's front-runner

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton hold double-digit leads over their closest challengers ahead of their home state's presidential primaries, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist Poll has found.

More than half of likely voters in New York's upcoming Republican and Democratic party presidential primaries said they would vote for the Manhattan businessman or former secretary of state and U.S. senator representing the Empire State, respectively. 

Trump leads his closest challenger, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, by 33 points, while Clinton holds a 14-point lead over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Brooklyn native.

The poll has a margin of error of 4.2 percentage points for Democrats and 6.1 for Republicans.

"The road to the conventions goes through New York for both the Democrats and Republicans," said Lee M. Miringoff, director of The Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. "Right now, the front-runners look like they will erase recent setbacks and add significantly to their delegate margins. New York is not likely to enhance the hopes of those trying to close the gap in the delegate hunt."

Monday found all of the candidates but Cruz stumping in New York, which could be pivotal if underdogs manage to wrest delegates from the front-runners. Clinton was in Long Island, while Sanders, Trump and Kasich were upstate. Two of Trump's children were found to have missed the deadline to register as Republicans, meaning they won't be able to vote for their father next week.

Fifty-five percent of polled Democrats said they were planning on voting for Clinton, while 41 percent of voters said they planned to vote for Sanders. Three percent of likely voters were still undecided ahead of the April 19 primaries.

On the Republican side, Trump was the favored candidate of 54 percent of polled voters. Twenty-one percent told pollsters they’d be voting for Kasich, and another 18 percent said they were planning to cast ballots for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

If Trump wins the state but goes to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland later this year without enough delegates to win the party’s nomination on the first ballot, about 64 percent of likely Republican primary voters in New York said that Trump should still get the nomination. Another 28 percent said that the party should nominate someone else.

Regardless of whom the GOP selects as its nominee, pollsters found they’d have trouble beating the Democratic nominee. Sanders and Clinton both hold large margins over each of the Republican candidates. Kasich performs better than Cruz or Trump, but still would trail either Democratic candidate by at least 15 points.

The poll comes the same day as a Monmouth University poll of likely Democratic voters that found Clinton would likely beat Sanders by about 12 points if the primary were held today.

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