Trump on top, Carson wins on personality

The poll found that 18 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters now support Carson, down eight points from 26 percent in a poll conducted last month.

But there’s good news for Christie: 52 percent of Republican voters said they could support him for president, while 35 percent said they couldn’t.

In hypothetical match-ups against Republicans, the poll shows that Clinton would lose in New Hampshire against Sen.

In the Bloomberg poll, Republican voters said Trump was better able than Carson to deal with Islamic terrorism, 55 percent to 29 percent. Clinton controls almost half of the Democrat primary vote, 46.6 percent, according to the poll.

The poll, taken November 15-17, gave Republicans what amounted to a candidate taste test, asking them to compare perceived strengths of the top four candidates, broken into two pairings. Thirty-six percent say economic issues are most important to them when considering which candidates to support. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), both of whom tie for second place at 10 percent.

Seventy-one percent said they aren’t concerned that questions have been raised about a few of the facts in Carson’s autobiography, while 66 percent aren’t anxious that a few have asked whether Trump can wage a campaign without offending large groups of people.

Sixty percent of voters also disapprove of the way the state’s legislative Republican majority is doing its job. Carson polled 9 percent, tying Bush for fourth place.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush followed Rubio with just 4 percent of the vote, despite recent efforts to revive his campaign.

Cruz beat out Rubio as the candidate who would do more to solve the problem of illegal immigration. Ron Johnson with 58 percent support to Johnson’s 38 percent.

The Bloomberg poll of 1,002 USA adults had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points. A subset of 379 registered Republican voters and those who lean Republican had a margin of error of 5 percentage points. Almost seven percent are undecided and 2.5 percent prefer someone else.