Donald Trump Hits Highest Support and Widest Lead Yet, New Poll Shows

Ted Cruz seem to have become the two titans that will likely fight it out for the GOP Presidential nomination.

According to the latest CNN/ORC Poll, 36 percent of registered voters that are Republican or Republican-leaning support Trump, while his nearest competitor is 20 points behind.

Kay Henderson, news director of Radio Iowa, and Jesse Holland, part of the AP politics team, join Here & Now’s Indira Lakshmanan for our weekly look at the race for 2016.

Fifty-one percent of respondents said that Trump would be the right man to take care of the federal budget, and 48 percent of Republicans believe that he is the most qualified GOP presidential candidate to tackle illegal immigration crisis. Thursday’s confirmation of the visit comes after Trump indicated at a rally in Virginia on Wednesday night that he plans to visit Israel “soon”. Anxious that his lead may not fade before the voting starts, GOP strategists have begun to brace for a long and painful nomination fight, with Trump’s opponents hoping to grind him down over a period of months. The poll also shows that Trump runs significantly stronger among less-educated, less-affluent voters, and performs particularly well among voters in the 50-64 age range. Other candidates total the support of almost 5 percent of Republican voters. That’s 4 percentage points more than surgeon Ben Carson.

Trump is also the top candidate on foreign policy, though Cruz and Rubio trail him in that category by only 13 and 16 points respectively.

More generally, about 4 in 10 Republicans surveyed said Trump is the most effective candidate to solve the problems of the United States, according to CNN.

Trump gets 27 per cent of Republican voters, with 17 per cent for Rubio, 16 per cent each for Carson and Cruz of Texas and five per cent for Bush. The Quinnipiac University National poll also has Trump leading.

The newspaper said Trump “invoked a series of stereotypes about Jews that are often deemed offensive and even anti-Semitic” including those that reference “money and control”.

Second, if it weren’t already clear, his comments this week underscore that Mr. Trump sees people as caricatures and stereotypes to be poked at and exploited rather than as individuals with dignity.

Support has been growing for Cruz and Rubio as the campaign moves along, partly because of how well they did in the candidates’ televised debates. Donald Trump is giving his supporters the complex sell. Mike Huckabee and John Kasich have 2 percent support and Rand Paul garnered 1 percent. Among those without college degrees, Trump holds a runaway lead: 46% support the businessman, compared with 12% for Cruz, 11% for Carson and just 8% for Rubio.