A Fox News poll has Donald Trump virtually tied with Hillary Clinton nationally. | Getty Fox national poll: Clinton and Trump in virtual tie in 4-way race

After weeks of slipping in the polls, Donald Trump is narrowing the advantage Hillary Clinton built in the wake of last month’s nominating conventions, a new Fox News poll of registered voters shows.

The poll, released Wednesday evening, shows Clinton with just a 2 percentage point lead, 41 percent to 39 percent, over Trump in a four-way race that also includes Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein. The former secretary of state’s advantage sits within the poll’s 3-point margin of error, putting her in a statistical tie with her GOP opponent.


Stein was favored by 4 percent of those polled while Johnson polled at 9 percent, 6 points short of the average showing of 15 percent in a set of five polls that he needs to qualify for the upcoming presidential debates. The Fox News poll is one of the five being used as criteria by the Commission on Presidential Debates to determine which candidates qualify.

In a head-to-head matchup between Clinton and Trump, the former secretary of state holds a statistically significant 6 point lead over the Manhattan billionaire, 48 percent to 42 percent among registered voters. That lead is down, however, from the 10-point advantage she held in the Fox News poll’s previous iteration, conducted at the beginning of August after a well-received Democratic National Convention and amid Trump’s feud with the parents of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq in 2004.

In the four-way race, Clinton’s lead among African-Americans polled is 68 percentage points and 15 points among women reached by the poll. Among Hispanic respondents, she leads by 19 points.

White registered voters reached by the poll favored Trump over Clinton by a 13-point margin, the same advantage the Manhattan billionaire held among male respondents. White registered voters without a college degree said they preferred Trump by 23 points, while white evangelical Christians respondents picked Trump by a 55-point margin.

Trump’s favorability rating hit an all-time high in the fresh Fox News poll, climbing to 42 percent, still 2 points short of the 45 percent of respondents who said they had a favorable view of Clinton. 56 percent said they viewed Trump unfavorably, while 53 percent said the same of Clinton.

The Fox News poll was conducted from Aug. 28 to 30 via telephone, reaching 1,011 registered voters nationwide on cellphones and landlines. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.