That might have been the end of it, but on Saturday night the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics released a poll that shows Cruz with a huge lead in Iowa; the senator took 31 percent of Republicans polled, and Trump had 21 percent.
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New polls show a new Republican leader in Iowa: Ted Cruz.
CNN’s Jack Tapper asked Trump, “Why should voters go for you over Ted Cruz?”.
Cruz is also behind Clinton in a general election match-up – albeit by a slimmer margin – as Cruz falling 3 points short of Clinton’s 48% support in the poll.
If Trump’s awful head-to-head poll numbers against Clinton continue, that could seriously hurt his chances when Republican voters start heading to the polls in February and March. In fact, the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll getting all the attention today, the one with Cruz only -5 points behind Trump (27% to 22%), appears to be the real outlier. According to the story, Cruz’s campaign has targeted Iowa Caucus-voters with a tailored messages, phone calls and visits using a method called “psychographic targeting”.
Some of the ground Cruz has gained in the polls is due to the dropping popularity of Ben Carson.
CHARLIE ROSE: Donald Trump is on the offensive against Ted Cruz, with his strongest criticism yet of the Texas senator.
“Rand Paul wrote the amendment to suspend visas to nations with high risks of terrorism, but Marco Rubio voted no”, the narrator says. On Trump’s right will be Texas Sen.
Sixty-five percent said they “strongly” or “somewhat” agree that Mr. Trump has the temperament needed to carry out the role of president of the United States.
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Trump also directly responded to the source of the new tension between the two candidates: a report Thursday that Cruz had raised questions about Trump’s “judgment” at a fundraiser. She’s polling at 56 percent, while Sanders sits at 37 percent. The CNN/ORC poll which found Trump ahead is the oldest in the bunch, with interviews conducted between November 28 and December 6. The poll was made via landline and cellphone calls and has a margin of error of plus-minus 4.9 percentage points.
