Poll: Hillary Clinton holds wide lead among Asian-American voters

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 (UPI) -- Mirroring her standing with other minority groups, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton holds a wide lead among Asian-Americans, a new poll finds.

Clinton leads her Republican opponent Donald Trump 55 percent to 14 percent, according to the Fall 2016 National Asian-American Survey. The poll found 15 percent of Asian-American voters are undecided. Clinton's lead expands to 59 percent to 16 percent when voters leaning toward one candidate or the other are included.

Asian-American voters are more than twice as likely to be registered Democrats than Republicans and 65 percent said they hold an unfavorable view of Trump.

While Asian-Americans only represent about 5 percent of the overall U.S. population and 3 percent of the overall electorate, Clinton's advantage could be crucial in closely contested battleground states with somewhat larger Asian populations than the national average.

Among the swing states included in the UPI/CVoter daily tracking poll, the highest percentage of Asian-Americans is in Nevada, where they comprise about 9 percent of the state's population. The second-highest swing state Asian population is in Virginia, where they are 6.5 percent of the population, according to 2010 Census data.

Clinton leads by less than 1 point in Nevada and trails Trump by 5 points in Virginia in the UPI/CVoter poll.

The survey of 1,684 Asian-American and 261 Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander registered voters was conducted Aug. 10 to Sept. 29 via landlines and cellphones in English and 10 other languages. It has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points. It was conducted by a group of political scientists from four universities in California.