US women worry about being sexually assaulted after Donald Trump lewd audio recording : Gallup Poll

Students and others demonstrate on the Penn State campus against sexual assault on Friday, March 20, 2015, in State College, Pennsylvania. (Photo by AP)

About one in three women in the United States say they worry about being sexually assaulted, a new poll shows, as the lewd audio recording of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has made sexual harassment of women a major issue in the US presidential campaign.

Thirty-four percent of American women say they are "occasionally" or "frequently" worried about being sexually assaulted, according to the Gallup poll conducted October 5-9 which included two days before and three days after the October 7 release of audiotapes of Trump talking about groping women.

The latest figure is higher than the 30 percent who worried about sexual assault from 2013 through 2015, mostly because of an increase in women's concern. “More Americans, and more women, are concerned about sexual assault than in recent years,” Gallup said.

Younger women report a higher level of concern about being sexually assaulted compared to older women, the poll found.

Forty-two percent of women under the age of 50 say they are concerned at least occasionally about it, compared with 25 percent of women aged 50 and older.

Overall, 20 percent of all American adults say they worry frequently or occasionally about being sexually assaulted. Relatively few men, 5 percent, worry about being sexually assaulted.

US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during the final presidential debate at the Thomas & Mack Center on the campus of the University of Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada on October 19, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

Trump’s audio recordings have made the treatment of women and sexual assault a major issue in the US presidential campaign.

While the New York real estate magnate has said the comments he made in the video was just talk and he had never behaved in that way, more than a dozen women have gone public with allegations of sexual harassment against him going back more than 30 years.