Cruz Vaults to Lead Among Republican Candidates in Iowa Poll

One week after he appeared at the Rising Tide Summit to copious support, Texas Senator Ted Cruz has vaulted ahead of Donald Trump in the latest Iowa Poll, from the Des Moines Register.

Donald Trump, now 10 points below Cruz, wasted no time in tearing into Cruz – and the poll – during an Iowa stop. Unlike most of the other candidates, Cruz has avoided criticizing Trump at every turn.

Mr Cruz has spent little money on advertising in Iowa so far, according to CNN, suggesting his popularity could rise further. This is the biggest leap in five caucus cycles, the newspaper’s records show. Marco Rubio, at 13%, and Ben Carson, at 10%.

The rest of the field captured support in the single digits, led by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush at 6 percent.

Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee and Chris Christie all are tied with 3%.

Mr Trump, who has a solid lead in national polls among Republicans, quickly tweeted about another survey.

Trump also on Friday night foreshadowed a poor polling result, telling the crowd: “Every time the Des Moines Register does a poll, I always do badly”.

Trump also took to Twitter, but cited his lead in the CNN/ORC poll released Monday that had him ahead in Iowa. Nationally, a CNN/ORC poll released earlier this month found the brash billionaire sitting atop the GOP field with 36%, 20 points ahead of Cruz, the GOP’s runner-up.

Cruz’s candidacy is a deliberate rebuke to that idea, a campaign that seeks not to broaden the GOP’s base of support, but to deepen it.

Mr. Cruz, whose father, Rafael Cruz, emigrated from Cuba and is a fiery evangelical pastor, has succeeded more than any other candidate in enlisting conservative Christian support in Iowa.

Given his standing 50 days before the caucuses, that’s a harder argument to make. Cruz had written: “The Establishment’s only hope: Trump & me in a cage match”.

I’m betting that Trump drops this line of attack, since it went over so poorly in the room, but if the media helps him out by underreporting this the way they did his attack on black people a few weeks back, it shouldn’t hurt him any more than anything else has. Last week, when Trump called on the federal government to bar Muslims from entering the United States, Cruz refused to join the chorus of condemnation.