Trump, Sanders lead in latest New Hampshire poll

“What a difference a caucus makes”, said David Paleologos, director of the Political Research Center at Suffolk University.

“I guess they are getting bored with the race with five days to go until New Hampshire”, he added.

Despite finishing third in Iowa, Rubio surprised by surpassing expectations for his performance in the state. Bernie Sanders of neighboring Vermont holds a very substantial lead.

And former governor John H Sununu of New Hampshire, a statesman of the state Republican Party, branded Trump a “loser” with a string of business failures behind him.

This indicates a dramatic decrease in support for Cruz, who recently pulled off a first-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.

On Wednesday he took out a full-page ad in a leading New Hampshire newspaper, the Union-Leader, attacking Rubio as not ready to serve as commander-in-chief.

“I think it’s fine”, Trump told the Herald about the jibes.

Trump claims Cruz made up the diffidence and finished with a four point lead by spreading lies about Trump’s stance on Obamacare and purposefully spreading misinformation that Ben Carson dropped out of the presidential race.

The survey also found voters in both parties said they feel differently about backing the current front-runners in the general election. Twenty-nine percent of likely Republican voters said they would support him before Iowa, and 29 percent support him now. During media interviews and presidential debates, Rubio is quick to fall back on the same script that he often delivers before GOP audiences in New Hampshire and Iowa. Several social media users tweeted screengrabs of an alleged deleted tweet from Trump’s official account, in which he said Cruz “illegally” stolen the vote.

The poll finds that about a third of likely GOP primary voters say they’re still trying to decide, just about double the share among likely Democratic voters. The fight for second place between Cruz, Rubio and Kasich remains within the survey’s margin of sampling error.