Among Washington elites, Hillary Clinton leads by 40 points

Beltway insiders prefer Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump by overwhelming margins, a new poll conducted by Echelon Insights for the Washington Examiner reveals.

Democrat Hillary Clinton won 62 percent of Washington elites polled, compared to 22 percent supporting Republican nominee Donald Trump. Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson pulled in 3 percent, while the remainder (14 percent) said they would support some other candidate, not vote, or were undecided. (The poll was conducted before conservative independent Evan McMullin entered the race.)

Echelon Insights conducted a scientific survey of 400 Washington elites: all those sampled live in the D.C. area, are registered voters, read or watch the news daily, and are employed with incomes of at least $75,000 for respondents over age 40 or on a commensurate scale for younger respondents.

The results indicate that the Beltway class is far closer to Clinton than the rest of the country is. While the former secretary of state and New York senator leads in almost all national polls, she averages well below 50 percent. Clinton's average lead in national polls that include Johnson is about 7 points, according to RealClearPolitics. Her 40-point lead among elites is far larger and about equal to her lead in Maryland polls.

Clinton won the support of nearly one in five Republican insiders in the poll. And the same proportion of Republicans said they would support a minor candidate, not vote, or were still undecided. This is about triple the support Clinton gets from Republicans in the rest of the country — a recent Reuters poll showed her pulling in only 6 percent of Republicans nationwide.