Ben Carson fourth in New Hampshire survey

When Trump and Carson go head-to-head, Trump is the choice among Republicans as the strongest candidate to fight the Islamic State (55 percent to 29 percent) and to handle Russian leader Vladimir Putin (52-38). Fiorina is down 8 points from September at 3 percent, and Bush is down 7 points, and has 6 percent. The media tends to shift its focus to these candidates leading the race – & in that spotlight can appear particularly hard to those in that are newer to the political scene.

Carson and the other Republican candidates still have more than two months before the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary to gain traction. Looking at a number of subgroups may offer a few clues as to how the early contests could go. That put him 10 points ahead of both Ben Carson and Florida Sen.

Meanwhile, Cruz has been courting evangelical Christian voters, a powerful group in the Republican primaries that has hitherto largely gravitated toward Carson.

The new poll, prepared by Quinnipiac University, tested potential Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in potential match-ups against Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio.

The poll surveyed 1,002 adults between November 15 and 17. A recent national poll, for instance, showed even weaker Republicans like Chris Christie with a significant lead over Clinton, while other pollsters have failed to produce such pro-Republican outcomes. Respondents for this non-probability survey were selected from the almost three million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day. Trump is out with a new book that reads like a campaign manifesto providing lots of boasting, but little in the way of new detail on how he plans to implement policy goals. Overall results have an error estimate of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points and the error estimate for the leaned Republican voters is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.