“Donald Trump, now 10 points below Cruz, was in a pique about not being front-runner even before the Iowa Poll results were announced Saturday evening”, Jacobs wrote.
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Support for the junior senator from Texas has soared to 31 percent among those likely to attend the February caucuses that kick off the Republican presidential nomination process.
Trump’s high support in Iowa, according to previous polls by the group was 23 percent.
Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson had led in most other polls taken in recent months.
There’s no good news in the poll for Bush, who despite his political pedigree as the son and brother of past presidents and a big campaign fund, has moved up only slightly since October, to 6 percent from 5 percent, and is in fifth place. That could come as a surprise to members of Washington’s establishment, who have shown disdain for him and complained that his three years there have been marked by showmanship, inflexibility and a lack of collegiality.
Trump, who called the Register “the worst” at a rally in Des Moines Friday night and predicted that the poll would show him disappearing, was quick to bash the results on Twitter.
The Register’s pollster J. Ann Selzer is quoted as saying this poll represents a “big shakeup”.
The poll, which was conducted from December 7 to 10, surveyed 400 likely Republican caucus participants.
Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee and Chris Christie all are tied with 3%.
Twenty percent of all voters also listed Cruz as their second choice in the poll, suggesting he has a lot of untapped support and may not have peaked in the state. The margin of error is 4.9 percent.
Trump, in the previous poll, had registered 19 percent-which means he saw a 2-point jump from the last poll.
“I always expected that Cruz would do well in Iowa”. Cruz is now 73 percent favorable, which is up 12 points from October. The former Florida governor’s negatives are the highest among GOP candidates, with 54 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers viewing Bush unfavorably, Bloomberg said.
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The polling firm, Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, is considered one of the best at predicting the state, which is notoriously hard to poll accurately.
