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new Monmouth University poll shows Donald Trump crushing fellow Republicans in New Hampshire, where he has double the support of the next closest candidate, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, among voters likely to participate in the Granite State primary.
Trump’s 24 percent support bests Bush’s 12 percent in the poll, conducted July 23-26 of 467 New Hampshire voters expected to vote in the Republican primary.
The results for other Republican candidates are:
- Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, 7 percent each
- Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, 6 percent
- Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, 5 percent apiece
- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, 4 percent
- Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, 3 percent
The rest of the pack — former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, and former New York Gov. George Pataki each received 2 percent. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore all got 1 percent or less.
Some 14 percent of likely primary voters were undecided in poll, which had a margin of error of 4.5 percent.
"Trump takes votes from nearly all of his opponents, but appears to hurt Chris Christie, Scott Walker, and Ted Cruz the most," according to the Monmouth poll.
To the disbelief of pollsters, pundits and prognosticators, Trump’s presidential campaign is resonating with huge swaths of the Republican electorate, giving legs to the boastful candidate whose unabated and unapologetic attacks on immigrants and Sen. John McCain’s war service don’t appear to have hurt him with voters.
"This has gone on longer than I expected," Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University poll, told
The Hill. "I thought after the McCain comments, voters would start looking at other candidates, but he’s survived.
"I think it’s evidence he’s really tapping in to something."
In the first national survey since Trump disparaged McCain, saying he wasn’t a war hero despite spending years as a POW after his plane was shot down while fighting in Vietnam, a new
CNN/ORC national poll has the billionaire real estate mogul leading the Republican field.
The Hill notes that it’s the fifth consecutive major national survey showing Trump in the No. 1 spot, trailing only Bush as the candidate Republicans believe is most likely to win the party’s nomination.
Some 51 percent of Republicans view Trump favorably.
Trump's negatives have declined over the past month, from 55 percent in June to 41 percent in July, according to Murray, who told The Hill that he’s never seen that kind of change in a month for a candidate already so well-known.
"Usually it takes a scandal or heroic act for people to change their underlying opinions that dramatically," Murray said. "All he did was announce he’s running for president."
CNN attributes Trump’s soaring popularity to "widespread dissatisfaction with Washington" and his "vocal criticism of the country's immigration policies."
In the CNN poll, some 53 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters said they don’t feel their views are "well represented in Washington at all," a huge leap when compared to the 27 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters who voiced the same sentiments.
That poll, taken July 22-25 of 1,017 adults, had a plus or minus 3.5 percentage points margin of error.
Critics tell The Hill that Trump’s time out front could be numbered, ending perhaps as early as Aug. 6, the day of the first Republican debate.
That’s when he will be forced to answer questions about his record and be compared to "what many in the party describe as the deepest and most experienced field of candidates the GOP has ever had."
"Right now, people are seeing news stories about him with no context of where other candidates stand or what they’re saying," GOP pollster David Winston told The Hill. "It’s going to be a huge leap for Trump to transform that media attention into a lasting argument that he’s the Republican best able to lead the country. That’s a big jump."
GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak added that Trump will soon feel the heat from other candidates, who will begin "going after him and sending out opposition research holding him accountable.
"There’s a treasure trove of flip-flops and questionable business dealing in his past," he said. "The scrutiny there hasn’t started yet, but now that he’s on top, he’ll get it from the media and the other campaigns."
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