Trump’s allegation, made on Twitter, was that the Cruz campaign’s caucus-day circulation of a CNN report that said Ben Carson was returning home to Florida and wasn’t campaigning in New Hampshire and SC amounted to “fraud”. Carson finished a distant fourth in Monday’s Iowa Caucuses, garnering 9 percent of the vote and finishing behind Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio.
Advertisement
The new poll results likely reflect Trump’s loss in Iowa, which could also explain the surge by both Cruz and Rubio.
The accusations against Cruz were the latest aggressive tactic from Trump, who has courted controversy with his attacks on other candidates and by urging a ban on Muslims entering the United States and branding Mexican immigrants as criminals.
“Despite the Iowa setback, Donald Trump is way ahead of his GOP opponents”, said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac poll.
The Cruz campaign apologised to Carson’s camp, saying it was a misunderstanding.
On the Republican side, Trump continued to hold a wide lead among likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire, according to a new CNN/WMUR tracking poll, with the pack vying for second place beginning to break up.
The incident led fellow candidate Donald Trump to accuse Cruz of fraud on Wednesday, writing on Twitter: “Many people voted for Cruz over Carson because of this Cruz fraud”.
Trump tweeted that “during primetime of the Iowa Caucus, Cruz put out a release that @RealBenCarson was quitting the race, and to caucus (or vote) for Cruz”. He was actually going to move to New Hampshire no matter what the Iowa caucus results were.
Cruz even went as far as claiming that the media “wants to stir up a fight between Ben Carson and me”. For the first time, Republican leaders opposed to Trump’s candidacy said they believed there was a chance to break his grip on New Hampshire as the party establishment closes ranks around a smaller number of candidates and Trump faces new threats on the right.
Advertisement
“I think that the good old simple system where you walk in and you cast your vote, like we have, as an example, in New Hampshire, I think it’s better”. “Sen. Cruz told me that he was not aware of that when I talked to him, and that he did not agree with that kind of thing”.
