Iowa poll: Ted Cruz takes GOP lead over Trump as Carson falls

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has overtaken businessman Donald Trump in the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination in Iowa, a new poll from Monmouth University shows.

The survey represents a marked difference from another Iowa poll released hours earlier by Monmouth University, which found Cruz rocketing past Trump, 24 percent to 19 percent. “Among this more probable group of voters, Cruz (25 percent) and Rubio (21 percent) garner greater support than Trump (16 percent) and Carson (13 percent)”, a Monmouth release accompanying the poll said.

Monmouth pollster Patrick Murray partly attributed Cruz’s rise to a collapse in support for retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, whose numbers have dropped by 19 points since two months ago.

Ted Cruz has his first polling lead in the Iowa caucuses, powered by his strength among evangelical and tea party voters. Cruz’s support, on the other hand, has jumped by 14 points.

The poll suggests Trump may be able to overtake Cruz, however, if he is able to draw new Republican supporters to the typically low-turnout caucuses.

Also, the latest poll reveals that in a general note, 4 out of 10 Republicans believe Trump’s efficiency in creating solutions for the country’s issues, including the San Bernardino, California shooting that took place a day before the surveys were conducted.

Evangelical Christian voters, who made up half the poll’s sample, backed Cruz over Trump by a 30 percent to 18 percent margin.

In short, the best guess is that the polls right now won’t match the caucus results.

Clinton’s biggest GOP lead came against Republican front-runner Donald Trump, according to the MSNBC/Telemundo/Marist poll, with her beating him 52-41.

“I think the reason that Rubio’s allies have resorted to false attack ads is they are very, very nervous about our surge in the polls, about the fact that conservatives are uniting behind our campaign”, Cruz told radio host Hugh Hewitt last week. The margin of error for the 345 Democrats/Democrat leaners polled is +/- 5.4 points. Just 20 percent said they were completely decided on their choice.