As you’ve seen NBC has a new poll out tonight showing Ted Cruz pulling into a nationwide lead in the GOP primary race. Of course, there is no national primary. But Trump hasn’t been behind nationwide in basically forever. So is this legit?
There are four other national polls out which have at least some data from after Saturday night’s debate. One of them is from Morning Consult, a poll with a fairly novel methodology, which is even more recent and shows Trump fully 27 points out in front of Marco Rubio in second place.
Meanwhile two other polls – from Quinnipiac and Suffolk – have data from before and after the debate. And they show a Trump 20 and 15 point lead. Another poll has a 20 point Trump lead but it’s mainly before the debate.
In other words, there’s a lot of other poll data. And none of it shows any deterioration for Trump. The only other totally post-debate poll is much less of a known quantity (Morning Consult) than the highly respected NBC/WSJ poll. So it’s definitely possible that this is the first of a trend. But until we see more data, I think we have to look at this poll with a significant amount of skepticism.
