Rasmussen poll shows New York billionaire leading former U.S. Secretary of State by five points. A Common Dreams report: A new Rasmussen poll released Thursday shows Republican front-runner Donald Trump increasing his lead over Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The New York billionaire has a five-point edge over the Clinton, with 42 percent of likely voters saying they’d back him compared to 37 percent for Clinton. The poll also shows Trump now getting 76 percent of the Republican vote; Clinton nabbed 72 percent of the Democratic vote. Thirteen percent of Democrats would prefer Trump in square-off between the two, while nine percent of Republican voters would favor Clinton in such a match-up. A Rasmussen poll released at the beginning of the month, for comparison, showed the two candidates running neck-and-neck, with the real estate mogul with 41 percent to the former secretary of state’s 39 percent, within that poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The new Rasmussen poll, the New York Daily News reports, “suggests Trump could be experiencing a popularity surge as he pivots away from many of the controversial and bigoted statements he made during the GOP primary and embraces more establishment positions [...]