Trump Surges in NBC News-SurveyMonkey Poll

The poll showed Trump with 28 percent support from Republican and independent voters who lean Republican, while Carson dropped eight points from the previous poll. Marco Rubio, at 11%.

Still in the trenches – Carly Fiorina and Jeb Bush, who have declined into the single digits.

In a NY Times article this week, foreign policy advisers to Carson spoke about the difficulty the candidate is having mastering issues related to the Middle East and national security despite intensive tutoring. Looking at a number of subgroups may offer a few clues as to how the early contests could go. Ted Cruz, with 10 percent. Ted Cruz (22%) have clearly eaten away at what used to be the main pillar of Carson support.

The NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll paints a clear picture of what’s happening: At the heart of Carson’s rise has been the support of white evangelical voters, who hold particular sway in Iowa (where they accounted for almost 60% of all caucus-goers in 2012) and SC (where they made up 64 percent of the 2012 primary electorate).

“Among the candidates, he’s been the most prominent talking about the importance of religion to him”, University of Utah political science professor Matthew Burbank said, something voters can identify with in a predominantly Mormon state.

The poll finds that Rubio would beat Clinton 52-36 percent; Carson would win 52-38 percent; Cruz would beat Clinton 51-38 percent, while Trump gets 48 percent of the vote against Clinton’s 37 percent. Cruz increased to around 25% with the rest of the candidates lagging behind.

Stephanie Psyllos, Hannah Hartig, and Josh Clinton contributed reporting.

The survey of 5,755 adults was conducted online between November 15-17. Respondents for this non-probability survey were selected from the almost three million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day.

The poll included 2,440 Republican and Republican-leaning voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points and 1,983 Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

The poll was produced by the Data Analytics Lab of NBC News in conjunction with Penn’s Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies with data collection and tabulation conducted by SurveyMonkey.