Donald Trump at a rally in Westfield, Ind., on July 12. Photo: Zuma Press

 

Hillary Clinton maintains a 5-percentage-point lead over Donald Trump in the presidential race despite the FBI report on her email practices and mounting clamor for change by a restless electorate, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has found.

Mrs. Clinton held a 46%-41% margin over her Republican rival heading into the parties’ national conventions, unchanged from a Journal/NBC News survey taken last month. That previous poll was before the Federal Bureau of Investigation report that called the Democrat “extremely careless” for using a private email server while she was secretary of state.

That report has fueled doubts about Mrs. Clinton’s judgment, the poll found, but they don’t seem to translate into increased support for Mr. Trump.

The poll underscores the far-reaching challenges facing the GOP as it heads into its convention in Cleveland starting Monday. Few Republicans—13%—see their party as unified, and just 38% say they are satisfied with Mr. Trump as the party’s nominee.

The national conventions, for Republicans this week and for Democrats next week in Philadelphia, give both parties and their presidential nominees a chance to address not just their supporters but a wider audience of Americans, many of them sour on politics. The GOP has the bigger public-relations problem, the poll found: Just 27% of registered voters have a positive view of the Republican Party, compared with 39% who view the Democratic Party favorably.

Still, Mr. Trump is holding his own in a race where, according to the poll, a majority of voters wants a candidate who brings “major changes” to government rather than a “steady approach.”

“Donald Trump is a phenomenon we have never seen in American politics,” said Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster who worked on the survey with GOP pollster Bill McInturff. “In an election of change, Donald Trump would be a favorite. But he is the chaos candidate, and that is likely to nullify the advantage he has.”

The conventions are meeting after several weeks of great tumult at home and abroad, with not only the Clinton email report but also gun violence, racial tensions, and, with the massacre in Nice, France, heightened fears of international terrorism.

Still, the poll found one pillar of stability in U.S. politics: Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton remain the two most unpopular people in modern times to be major-party presidential nominees. For both, many supporters are driven by dislike of the opposing candidate.

Tammy Kirkiewicz, a 51-year-old in St. Louis, said she was backing Mr. Trump mostly because he is the only alternative to Mrs. Clinton. “I’m not sure that he’s the one; he’s sort of a loose cannon,” she said. “But if that’s the only option, it’s better than Hillary.”

Asked which candidate showed the right judgment to be a good president, 37% said Mrs. Clinton, and 25% said Mr. Trump. But a notable 32% said neither candidate—a huge difference from 2008, when only 6% said that neither Democrat Barack Obama nor Republican John McCain had the right judgment.

“Let me summarize the poll in four little words: They hate them both,” said Fred Yang, another Democratic pollster who conducted the survey. “But someone has to win, and each candidate has something to point to.”

Hillary Clinton speaks at the Old State House in Springfield, Ill., on July 13. Photo: Reuters

For Mrs. Clinton, the poll brought good news because she continued to lead Mr. Trump not only in a head-to-head test of support but also when third-party candidates, Libertarian Gary Johnson and Jill Stein of the Green Party, were added to the mix.

In that lineup, Mrs. Clinton draws 41% of the vote, Mr. Trump 35%, Mr. Johnson 11% and Ms. Stein 6%. That is a stronger performance for Mrs. Clinton than in the June poll, when she ended up tied with Mr. Trump in the broader field.

The poll identified other factors that could redound to her benefit.

More voters say they want a Democrat to be president than a Republican. Mr. Obama’s job performance wins approval from 51% of voters for the third month in a row. A growing share says the economy has improved and that Mr. Obama deserves credit, with 49% saying so in July, up from 45% in June 2015.

Still, the poll found that the FBI report on Mrs. Clinton’s email practices—released July 5, four days before survey interviews began—is casting a long shadow over voters’ view of her.

Fully 55% of those surveyed said her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state was an “important factor” in deciding whether to vote for her. That share rose from 42% when the question was asked in October 2015.

Half of voters said that, based on what they had heard about the FBI investigation, they believed Mrs. Clinton doesn’t have the right judgment to be a good president, with one-third of voters saying Mrs. Clinton does have the right judgment.

At the same time, a plurality of 43% said they believed the FBI investigation was “unfair and too partisan.”

The email controversy may also have taken a toll on Mrs. Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, who was accused of seeking improper influence over the FBI probe when he had a private conversation with Attorney General Loretta Lynch as they crossed paths on an airport tarmac.

Ms. Lynch and representatives of Mr. Clinton said they didn’t discuss the probe. Still, the poll found that those expressing negative views of Mr. Clinton jumped to 42%, from 35% in April.

“The email story is clearly impactful,” Mr. McInturff said. “For lots of people, the last two weeks has been their chance to hear and focus” on the email controversy. “As they focus on the story, it’s not been helpful to Hillary Clinton.”

Mr. Trump is navigating divisions within his party, with 60% saying they would have preferred someone else as the nominee. Mrs. Clinton’s party is more accepting: 45% would have preferred someone else as nominee.

William Reeves, 34, a Clinton supporter in Tampa, Fla., said he believed the email revelations were important and that Mrs. Clinton probably should have met punishment for her actions. But the matter wasn’t enough to deter him from voting for her.

“When it becomes a choice between Hillary Clinton’s proven track record and a complete nobody...it’s a pretty clear, easy choice,’’ Mr. Reeves said.

Still, the poll found that Republicans were still willing to swallow reservations and vote for the presumed GOP nominee: Asked to choose between Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton, 82% of Republicans backed their nominee. Although an anti-Trump faction remains, 61% of Republicans said it would be better for those skeptics to endorse Mr. Trump.

Denise Francis, 35, a Trump supporter in Texas, said she worried about the divisions she sees in the party and hopes that dissidents would rally behind Mr. Trump at the GOP convention.

“I hope they can all come together and be on the same page,” Ms. Francis said. “He’s got a big job on his hands to pull the country together.”

The poll of 1,000 registered voters was conducted July 9-13. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.