Donald Trump has his largest lead of the GOP presidential race, according to a new CNN/ORC poll.
Advertisement
A new CNN/ORC national poll released today found 36 per cent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents picking Mr Trump as their 2016 presidential candidate.
His nearest competitor, Texas senator Ted Cruz, trails by 20 points.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio was in fourth place, getting the nod of 12 percent of those surveyed.
Trumps support is heavily concentrated among non-college educated Republicans and those who only lean Republican and thus are less inclined to show up and vote in primaries and caucuses, Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginias Center for Politics said via email.
According to a CNN report, Trump garnered both the “broadest support and his widest lead in any national live-interviewer telephone poll since he announced his candidacy in June”.
Trump’s increasingly provocative remarks are causing party rivals to step up attacks against him and some conservatives to label him a “fascist”.
Majorities of Republicans say Trump is the best candidate to handle the economy and the federal budget.
Donald Trump supporters also rated him higher on a number of hot-button issues, such as the economy, foreign policy, immigration, and ISIS, “in some cases by 30- and 40-percentage point margins”, Yahoo added.
As for which candidate would have the best chance of winning the General Election, 52% say Trump, compared with 15% for Rubio, 11% for Cruz and 10% for Carson.
About 55 percent of GOP voters that are most interested in the illegal immigration issue said that they would back the businessman, while 49 percent of those interested in solving radical extremism view Trump as the right man for the job.
Trump was short on specifics about how he would tackle trying to broker peace in the Middle East, or even whether he supports the longstanding US government goal of a two-state solution – saying he didn’t want to show any bias in favor of one side or the other in case he does become president.
Neurosurgeon Ben Carson was at 14 percent, a drop of 8 percentage points.
Advertisement
For decades, a cornerstone of Republican foreign policy has been unyielding support for Israel. Rand Paul. Since last month’s poll, the three are down by an average of six points with Carson suffering the steepest slide at eight points. He held a small lead over Carson, and that support is across the board – tea party Republicans, non-tea party Republicans, born-again Christian Republicans.
