The results indicated that Trump and Ben Carson are neck-and-neck for the GOP nomination while Clinton holds a commanding lead among likely Democratic voters. Ted Cruz, each polling at 18 percent. Marco Rubio has 12 percent, The Politico reported.
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Recommended: What do you know about Donald Trump? .
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, once thought the candidate to beat, netted 4 just percent.
In potential head-to-head match-ups in the general election, Carson barely edges out Clinton, 45-44 percent. After all, Cruz has been expecting since day one that Trump will eventually flame out and his voters will switch to Cruz, the “outsider” who’s actually fought the establishment in Washington. This is what took place to Ben Carson over the past two weeks, as he came under scrutiny for biographical details in his memoir & criticism for his lack of foreign analysis experience.
Among GOP presidential candidates, Cruz was the only “yes” vote on a bill Congress approved last June that killed the National Security Agency’s disputed bulk phone records collection program and replaced it with a more restrictive measure to keep the records in phone companies’ hands.
On the Democratic side, it’s a dead heat. The attacks didn’t expose Trump as ill-prepared or unversed.
But days after ISIS claimed responsibility for killing more than 120 people in mass shootings and bombings across Paris, Trump’s fans are showing no signs of wavering in their support for the NY real estate mogul. “You have voters who are saying loudly and clearly that they want a strong leader to run our country”, said Trump’s campaign manager, “and that leader is Mr. Trump”. “These are not my assertions”.
Trump, who often describes himself as “the most militaristic person” there ever was, has reacted to the massacre by reiterating his vow to “bomb the s-t out of” ISIS as president.
America will have “absolutely no choice” but to close down a few mosques, said Trump on FOX News.
“That softness of support for Carson might put him in a similar category as Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum, all of whom rose to similar levels of support for several months, but then lost that support by the time voting started”, Princeton polling expert Sam Wang told Business Insider recently.
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The poll, taken November 15-17, gave Republicans what amounted to a candidate taste test, asking them to compare perceived strengths of the top four candidates, broken into two pairings. Republican primary voters don’t care that Trump is unelectable and could cost them the Senate and a bushel of House seats.
