Ted Cruz Surges Past Donald Trump in New Iowa Poll

Republican presidential candidate, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, addresses the Sunshine Summit in Orlando, Fla., Friday Nov. 13, 2015.

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz made a record-breaking 21 percentage-point jump in the latest poll released in Iowa, which holds its first-in-the-nation caucuses February 1. Since then, Cruz has wrapped up a set of massive endorsements, together with influential radio character Steve Deace, U.S. Rep. Steve King & Bob Vander Plaats, a social-conservative, evangelical leader within the state. “But with the ethanol, really it’s – he’s got to come a long way cause he’s right now for the oil”.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio now stands at 10 percent – and the rest of the field finds themselves still in single digits, including Jeb Bush (6 percent), Chris Christie (3 percent), Rand Paul (3 percent) and Mike Huckabee (3 percent).

Trump predicted Cruz would “fall like all others”.

And there are signs Cruz may not have peaked in Iowa yet. He said not a lot of evangelicals come out of Cuba, where Cruz’s father was born.

CNN said those were the figures from a CNN/ORC poll in Iowa released last Monday.

Cruz dominates yet another gauge the poll takes of candidates’ strength, the “Selzer Score”, which uses multiple measures to try to assess potential upside in a crowded field.

“If we win Iowa, I think we run the table”, Mr. Trump said on Friday at a rally in Des Moines.

And in a speech in Des Moines on Friday, Mr. Trump criticized Mr. Cruz’s opposition to federal support for ethanol, an important state industry, and in a more audacious attack, he questioned Mr. Cruz’s faith. “It’s like if you scratch my back I Will scratch yours, because if one of them wins, they’ll care for the other one”. Trump subsequently said he’d “certainly have things in mind for Ted”.

But for the next 50 days, Cruz and Trump appear to be barreling toward a tough fight for first place in the Hawkeye State.

Outside the rally, about a dozen Iowans gathered to protest Trump’s appearance in Iowa while one man briefly disrupted the rally inside the fairgrounds’ building before he was removed by security officers while supporters shouted “Trump” and “USA”. If voters continue to embrace Trump after he tossed Cubans onto the racist trash heap along with the Mexicans, Muslims, and blacks, it might just succeed in alienating the last 20% of Hispanic votes the Republicans were still getting.

The Cruz campaign declined to comment on Trump’s remarks.