Cruz won the endorsement of Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, last month. The showed Donald Trump at 36%, with his closest rival – Senator Ted Cruz – trailing by 20 points.
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Trump is increasingly seen by likely GOP caucusgoers as the Republican with the best chance to win the 2016 general election: 42% say Trump has the best shot, followed by 17% for Cruz and 11% each for Carson and Rubio. What explains these dramatic shifts?
Cruz leads among Republicans who say they regularly cast ballots at the caucuses, taking 25 percent support, followed by Rubio at 21 percent.
Like Cruz, he appears to have improved his standing with Iowa voters, increasing his support by seven percentage points since the last poll, up from 10 percent in October.
For weeks, Iowa Republican insiders have noted that Texas Sen. Monmouth’s pollsters report that those who are not regular Republican primary voters were more likely to support Trump, while among those who had participated in previous primaries, Cruz held an edge.
Evangelical voters, who make up about half of the Iowa GOP caucus electorate, back Cruz (30%) over Trump (18%), Rubio (16%), and Carson (15%). The Cruz momentum is attributed in large part to collecting disaffected Ben Carson backers, which itself is telling.
Rounding out the field in Iowa are former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at 6 percent, Sen. Sixty percent of Iowa Republicans said they’d be happy with Trump as the party’s nominee.
Jeb Bush receives just six percent support in the new survey, with Rand Paul (four percent), Carly Fiorina (three percent) and John Kasich (three percent) behind.
Trump supporters immediately took to social media to cheer their candidate:And no one cheered louder than Trump himself…
The telephone survey of 425 likely participants in the Iowa caucuses has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.8 percent.
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Most of the smart money says the GOP race is going to come down to Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, which is an assumption that Trump will fade.
