Ted Cruz tops Trump in Iowa, surges nationally: Darcy cartoon

Senator Marco Rubio and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson have both slipped slightly and sit at 10 per cent, while New Jersey Governor Chris Christie came in fifth at five per cent. None of the other eight Republican candidates is above four per cent. He made no mention of current national front-runner Donald Trump in his analysis.

Months of intense focus on the Republican race – and front-runner Donald Trump – have reverberated through the Democratic field, prompting front-runner Hillary Clinton to turn her attention to her would-be GOP challengers and leaving her chief rival, Vermont Sen.

For all the Establishment’s Trump paranoia, they hold almost the same degree of disdain for the populist, anti-Washington rhetoric and record of Cruz, and it’s now Cruz who may pose the greater threat for the nomination.

Maybe another question drills down to likely voters in another way. 65% and 54% of the people said Cruz & Trump had a good chance of winning, respectively.

Trump’s lead is up three points since December 1, and Cruz’s numbers show a two percentage point bump up, too.

Perhaps because of Trump’s consistency in the polls, it’s become common course for commentators to backtrack by arguing that his substantial lead might not be so important. If so, those humans had better take stock of what kind of life-changing damage a much smaller, but no less well-funded, percentage of Americans have wrought on almost every aspect of American society.

Worse yet, nearly a quarter of Americans say a “Trump presidency would make them proud” to be Americans again.

Ultimately, the Establishment may acknowledge both Trump and Cruz can’t be fully subdued, and decide to pursue a strategy to keep both alive, and fighting for the same space, to give Rubio the upper hand.

In Iowa, Cruz has been leading Trump by 10 points according to a poll conducted by the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics.

Ken Goldstein, a political scientist at the University of San Francisco who works as a polling analyst for Bloomberg Politics, analyzed the reasons for Trump performing better in online polls than in interviews.

For months, Cruz’s allies and supporters have watched Trump’s campaign with mixed feelings. Very smart people believe in their gut that there is no way that the NY businessman will do well in Iowa or win New Hampshire and then be a player deep into primary season.

Likewise, more than half GOP voters in May said Trump did not share their values, 55 percent to 40 percent. The Florida senator and his campaign have aggressively sought to show he and Cruz have similar positions on immigration, which Cruz has dismissed as an attempt to muddy the waters. But it’s not the most interesting part of the poll.

Cruz’s remarks on a possible Trump faceoff came on the second-to-last day of a weeklong swing through eight mostly southern states.

Trump is a awful nominee for Republicans in a general election.

Cruz has courted evangelicals. The Cruz leap comes on the heels of several recent polls showing the outsider has opened a substantial first place lead in Iowa.