A sizable portion of US voters believe that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is being supported by the media to defeat her Republican rival Donald Trump in the race for the White House, a new poll shows.

According to a Morning Consult poll released on Friday, some 38 percent believed that news coverage was biased in favor of the former first lady, while only 12 percent had the same opinion about Trump.

Twenty-seven percent thought that the media were being neutral and 23 percent were unsure or had no specific opinion, the poll showed.

Voters also voiced dissatisfaction with the level of fairness in the campaign coverage, with 33 percent of the participants describing it as “poor” towards each candidate.

In contrast, only 12 percent thought the media had “excellent” fairness, while 23 percent said it was “good” and 22 percent rated it as “only fair.”

Trump has recently stepped up his attacks on the media for what he calls an attempt to “rig” the November election.

“I’m not running against crooked Hillary, I’m running against the crooked media,” the billionaire businessman told his supporters at a rally in Fairfield, Connecticut, last week.

Trump’s campaign has received a wave of bad publicity from the media over the past few weeks, falling further behind Clinton on the path to the presidency.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Friday that the former secretary of state was ahead of Trump by an 8-point lead in terms of nationwide support, 42 percent to 34 percent.

Reuters noted that at this point of the race four years ago, President Barack Obama was leading his Republican challenger Mitt Romney by less than 2 points.

Trump released his first campaign ad of the general election on Friday. In comparison, Clinton’s campaign has spent $52 million on TV ads over the past few months, according to an NBC News analysis.