New Marquette poll shows Carson, Clinton leading in Wisconsin

Republican presidential candidate, businessman Donald Trump speaks at a news conference before a scheduled campaign rally, Wednesday, November 18, 2015, in Worcester, Mass.

“By mainstreaming Islamophobic and unconstitutional policies, Donald Trump and Ben Carson are contributing to an already toxic environment that may be hard to correct once their political ambitions have been satisfied”, said CAIR Government Affairs Manager Robert McCaw, according to a news release.

Though Carson remains one of the most favorable candidates in the GOP race, Carson’s favorability rating in New Hampshire has notably dipped. Trump said he would “strongly consider” shutting down US mosques on Monday, and followed up by saying he was open to registering all Muslims in the U.S.in a database. Besides Trump and Carson, who ranked first and second in the overall horserace at 24 percent and 20 percent, the survey also compared Senators Marco Rubio of Florida (12 percent) and Ted Cruz of Texas (9 percent). Marco Rubio is second with 17 percent. According to the poll, Feingold is supported by 49 percent of registered voters while Johnson receives 38 percent support. Lindsey Graham of SC is in sixth with 3.2 percent support. “He needs to knock out Carson and Cruz to move forward”, UMass Poll associate director Raymond La Raja said in a press release.

Why does Trump, who continues to offer little in the way of specifics, impress voters at a time when conventional wisdom would suggest experience is paramount?

“Carson is popular right now because of the fact that he has been brought up in to the presidential spotlight without any of the “corruption” that the many people believe the political system instills in other people as they become career politicians like Hillary Clinton”.

The pair was evenly matched on the question of who knows how to get things done (36 percent picked Rubio and 35 percent picked Cruz).

Younger voters helped push Sanders one point ahead of Clinton, 45 percent to 44 percent. Clinton now leads Sanders 59-26; six weeks ago her lead was 57-22.

Most of the candidates stayed consistent in their polling numbers, with the exception of Carson, who dropped 8 percent since WBUR’s last poll.

Voters did give Carson the edge on working effectively with Congress – 62 percent said he would be best at it, whereas 30 percent said Trump would.

Many polling experts have speculated that Carson’s support among Republicans may mirror the boom-and-bust arcs of previous insurgent candidates, and could be a figment of the inability of early polling to predict actual results several months out. Cruz has always been the attacker, painting other Republicans as squishes, sellouts and agents of Democrats. The smaller sample of 379 registered Republicans and those who lean toward that party has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.0 percentage points.