Trump leads Republican field by 20 points in new poll

The ad, which will run in newspapers in Des Moines, Miami, and Las Vegas, comes as Trump secured a 20-point lead over his nearest competitor in a new CNN/ORC poll released Friday. But the new poll finds the businessman with both his broadest support and his widest lead in any national live-interviewer telephone poll since he announced his candidacy in June.

Trump held up former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as a presidential rival “totally controlled by the people who gave him money” and boasted about branding Bush as “low-energy”.

As Republican party officials and congressional leaders begin contemplating what the political world would look like with Donald Trump at the top of the ticket, the complexion of the race could change abruptly.

Trump was among 14 Republican presidential contenders on the speaking program for Thursday’s meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition, a group that includes many GOP donors and whose primary benefactor, casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, spent more on the 2012 federal elections than any other donor.

Trump gets 27 per cent of Republican voters, with 17 per cent for Rubio, 16 per cent each for Carson and Cruz of Texas and five per cent for Bush.

Trump has furiously pushed back against the fact-checkers, seizing on evidence of much smaller celebrations – including a report about eight people being investigated – as proof that he was absolutely correct.

Trump grabbed 36 percent of the vote, up 9 percentage points from mid-October. It’s highly likely that the registered Republican respondents whom they queried were still thinking about illegal immigration when they were asked about the Republican candidate they would support for the presidential nomination. On foreign policy, Trump inches up to 32%, and among those who call terrorism an extremely important issue, 49% say they trust Trump most on ISIS.

And 42 percent said Trump was the candidate best equipped to solve the country’s problems.

And while several at the forum, which featured all 14 of the Republicans running for president, spoke vehemently about the need to take on radical Islam, they generally avoided anti-Muslim rhetoric at the event, which occurred as it was still unclear whether the previous day’s workplace shooting by a Muslim couple in San Bernardino, Calif., was linked to any militant movement.

Bush also claimed he would be a better general election candidate against the Democratic opponent.

Trump’s business roots help him on the economy, with 55 percent says he’s the guy.

Just 35 percent of those surveyed want to deport the 11 million or so undocumented immigrants in the United States: 63 percent said they oppose such a measure. We saw that in the Great Depression and many other moments in history. Trump’s rhetoric, including his revival of raising doubts about who Obama “reall” is, is showing that is precisely what the Republican rank and file want.

We’re not even sure what to say about this any more.

Gov. Chris Christie was fifth place with 4 percent, the same percentage as in October, when he was tied with Cruz and former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina for seventh place.

“Trump support skews towards non-voters and independents who in many states can not vote in primaries or caucuses – and, in any case, show up less often”, political analyst Charlie Cook wrote in National Journal this week.