Texas senator Ted Cruz leads Donald Trump in a new republican presidential poll from the Des Moines Register.
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Since the new year, Trump has promised to pump up his ground game in Iowa, allocating a portion of his budget to television advertising in the state.
Trump has attacked his rival with increasing frequency as Cruz’s standing in the Republican primary has raised, questioning Cruz’s eligibility to serve as president because of his birth in Canada and hitting the senator from Texas over his opposition to ethanol subsidies, an important issue in Iowa, the first caucus state.
Asked about Clinton’s remarks that Trump “was basically a Democrat before he was a Republican”, Cruz said on Carr’s show: “Hillary would know well how to identify Democrats”.
Cruz in recent days has insisted that his birthplace does not preclude him from meeting the constitutional requirement of being a “natural-born citizen” in order to be president.
“The market for Republican nominee has been the tightest betting contest in the 2016 United States presidential election so far and this the first time Trump has been favourite, which could well present a significant shift at a pivotal time in the campaign”, analysis on the Betfair website says.
Cruz said it’s obvious his candidacy is making Trump nervous.
Can Rubio steal the spotlight from Trump and Cruz long enough to make it a three-way race?
“Supposing he runs and everybody ‘s banking on him and then the courts rule he can’t run”.
Cruz repeated the line that Trump embodies NY values on Fox News’s “The Kelly File”, saying when asked to elaborate, “The rest of the country knows exactly what NY values are”.
“He’s been getting a little testy”, Trump noted of Cruz at his Wednesday night rally.
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Concerns over Cruz’s Canadian birthplace are especially strong among Trump supporters, 32 percent of whom report being bothered by it. “This is primarily the Trump-Cruz battleground [in Iowa]”, says Selzer, “and the people it bothers are Trump people more than anybody else”.
