A Monmouth poll released Wednesday showed that 65 percent of Republicans believed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was a “natural born citizen” and thus was qualified to run for President.
Trump has recently raised Cruz’s eligibility to run for President as a campaign issue, questioning his ability to do so under the Constitution’s requirement that a candidate must be a “natural-born citizen.” Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father.
Still, 12 percent of those surveyed in the Monmouth poll didn’t think Cruz was qualified as a “natural-born citizen” and another 24 percent responded that they didn’t know.
By contrast, 91 percent of Republicans surveyed thought real estate mogul Donald Trump was qualified to run for President under the same constitutional requirement. The poll showed that 2 percent said Trump wasn’t a “natural born citizen” and 7 percent responded that they didn’t know.
Another poll from Morning Consult showed that among Americans as a whole, even fewer people had faith in Cruz’s eligibility to run. The poll asked for a response to this inquiry with three different prompts, and the amount of people who said they thought Cruz was eligible to be President varied depending on how the circumstances of his birth were described to them.
The largest share of people said Cruz was eligible to run for President, 62 percent, when they were told that Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother and had always been a U.S. citizen himself. The least amount of people said he was eligible, 41 percent, when they were told that Cruz was born in Canada and his father was not a U.S. citizen.
View the relevant portion of the Morning Consult poll below:
