Voters wonder if Cruz can heal Washington’s bitter divisions

With fresh evidence that billionaire Donald Trump continues to dominate the GOP presidential polls, the second and third-tier candidates are beginning to sharpen their messages – and turn on one-another – in a mad scramble to improve their standings before the early 2016 primary contests. Marco Rubio took 17 percent and Sen.

More generally, most Republicans, 42 percent, also said that Trump would be most effective at solving the country’s problems, compared to 14 percent who picked Carson, 12 percent Cruz and 10 percent Rubio.

Here are winners and losers in the poll.

“ISIL loves Donald Trump because he is giving them an opportunity to bring people their way”, Graham said during a gathering with reporters following his formal speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition. Ted Cruz, who sits at 16 percent. “If you’re going to tell a woman whose been raped that she has to carry the child of the rapist, you’re going to lose most Americans”, he continued.

For Democrats, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton widens her lead over Sen.

Among Trump supporters, however, 46 percent say they’ve made up their minds, while 53 percent say they could change.

Looking beyond electoral support, at voters’ opinions of the candidates, can be helpful to understand what they’re telling the pollsters.

Still, these new national numbers come after a recent Quinnipiac poll in Iowa showed Carson giving way to Sen. Now, he’s at 5 percent.

Donald Trump previewed a coming political battle with fellow Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, the tea party senator from Texas who many are predicting is jockeying for Trump’s base of support.

“When the president stands up and says the Islamic State isn’t Islamic, that’s just nutty”, he said to some laughter. He was at 2 percent in this survey and 3 percent last month.

In an email missive Monday, Katie McGinty’s campaign said Trump “has spent the last six months insulting women and minorities” and that anxious Republicans are running to trump after Democrats swept five statewide judicial elections last month. None of the candidates would meet that standard now, but history leads us to expect favorable views to increase as we approach Election Day and voters convince themselves, under partisan influences, that, actually, they really do like this person on the ballot. This is despite only 29% of Republicans overall supporting the idea to 44% who are against it. In fact supporters of all 13 of the other candidates are against this concept.

The poll shows that voters overall prefer Clinton to the Republican nominees: In a head to head matchup with Trump, voters prefer Clinton, 47 percent to 41 percent. The subset of 672 Republican voters had a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points and the subset of 573 Democratic voters had a margin of error of 4.1 percentage points.