A CNN/ORC presidential preference poll released Monday suggests that Vermont Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders could beat billionaire Donald Trump and Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker in a head-to-head 2016 general election contest.

The survey polled 1,017 adult Americans via telephone from July 22-25 and found Sanders beating Trump 58 percent to 38 percent among all Americans and 59 percent to 38 percent among registered voters. Sanders also lead Walker 48 percent to 42 percent among all Americans and 48 percent to 43 percent among registered voters. The poll found Sanders in a statistical tie with Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

Hillary Clinton fared better than Sanders in the poll and was found to be leading Bush and beating Trump and Walker by wider margins.

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[RELATED: Bernie Sanders Calls for Sweeping Gun Ban That Would Outlaw All Self-Defense Firearms]

Another Quinnipiac University presidential preference poll of 1,644 registered voters nationwide, conducted via telephone from July 23-28, found Sanders leading Trump 45 percent to 37 percent. In that poll, Walker led Sanders 42 percent to 37 percent, and respondents chose Bush over Vermont’s senator by a margin of 5 percentage points.

The Hill’s Brent Budowsky, who cautioned that the CNN/ORC poll “may prove to be an outlier,” argued that the poll results show that Sanders is not just rising against Trump as a reaction to the media’s obsession with the billionaire reality television star, but rising against Republicans generally. “The fact that Sanders beats Walker by six to seven points [in the CNN/ORC poll], depending on whether all voters or likely voters are counted — a near-landslide margin in a general election — makes it clear that the Sanders surge is more than a surge against Donald Trump, but a move that makes him competitive with all Republican candidates… Most interesting is the fact that Sanders is running dead even with Bush, which means that this poll, at least, refutes the notion that Sanders is not electable and supports the idea, instead, that Sanders could defeat any Republican,” wrote Budowsky.

Meanwhile, Sanders’ campaign events have drawn unexpectedly large crowds.

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