HAMDEN -- Connecticut voters pick Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by just seven points in a Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday.
People surveyed chose former Secretary of State Clinton over businessman Donald Trump 45 percent to 38 percent. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has more support than Trump, 54 percent versus 35 percent.
"Democratic candidates have won typically by double digit margins," said poll director Douglas Schwartz. "When you see a candidate within seven points, that is within striking distance."
With third-party candidates in play, Clinton gets 41 percent, with 36 percent for Trump, 6 percent for Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson and 3 percent for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
A high number of voters have unfavorable views of both Clinton and Trump. Clinton is viewed as strongly unfavorable by 55 percent of those polled. Trump’s strongly unfavorable ratings were 61 percent.
"Some pundits have referred to this election as the sort of nose holder election, that it's going to be the lesser of two evils for a lot of people,” said Schwartz.
Clinton made history Monday, but her campaign doesn't want that to discourage any voters from turning out for the final Super Tuesday of the 2016 presidential primary season.
"There's a lot of people we want to make sure turn out today. We don't want to send a message that anybody's vote doesn't count," Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, told CNN's Alisyn Camerota on "New Day." "Hillary said at the beginning of this campaign, she was going to fight for every single vote. That's what we're going to do."
Clinton clinched the Democratic presidential nomination Monday, according to CNN's delegate and superdelegate count, and will become the first woman in the 240-year history of the United States to lead the presidential ticket of a major political party.
Trump's fellow party members have sharply distanced themselves from their presumptive nominee, with figures across the ideological spectrum calling his latest comments discrediting the federal judge overseeing the Trump University case. Trump called Indiana-born Judge Gonzalo Curiel as a "Mexican." . But no Republican endorser has drawn the ultimate distance -- disavowing the candidate making those provocative claims.
Republicans have expressed a deep desire for "party unity," but on Monday and Tuesday they largely refused to stand beside him and take the heat.
"I'm not even going to pretend to defend them," House Speaker Paul Ryan said a Washington news conference Tuesday, adding that Trump's remarks resembled "the textbook definition of a racist comment."
Information from CNN was included in this story.