Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump jumped four percentage points in support among GOP primary voters and further separated himself from the competition, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll partly released Monday.
Trump had 25 percent of support, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson had 22 percent, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the only other candidate to garner support in the double digits, had 13 percent.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) had 9 percent, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush had 8, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina had 7 percent.
A WSJ/NBC poll in late September had Trump with 21 percent of support. That same poll had Carson with 20 percent support. Rubio and Fiorina each had 11 percent, Bush had 7 percent of support in the previous poll.
The poll was conducted among 400 Republicans by phone interview from Oct. 15-18. The margin of error was plus or minus 4.37 percentage points.
The poll’s full results will be released Tuesday.
Rubio is slowly rising in the ranks, as expected. Fiorina is starting the crash stage that flavor of the month candidates take in the GOP. Kasich, Paul, etc. are seeing their support vanish as GOP voters start getting serious about winnowing people out.
Still, I am becoming more convinced that we aren’t really going to get a handle on whats happening in the GOP race until after Iowa, and probably after NH. Trump is polling well with people who never vote. That’s a problem for a campaign that has never run a campaign. If Carson can’t pull a big win in Iowa, his support elsewhere will drain off rapidly. If he can, it may very well solidify. Yeah he is crazy and all, and that plays well with the GOP…but I am still not convinced that the GOP is going to nominate a Black man to replace Obama.
This seems like further corroboration that these six have separated themselves from the rest of the Republican field, and that until that changes, everyone else should be sent to the kiddie table.
Why do I keep flashing on Monty Python’s election night coverage? The G.O.P. appears to have no one who isn’t representing either The Silly Party, or the Very Silly Party. They have no one who is even remotely plausible as the President of the most powerful nation on the planet.
Are they really going to nominate Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F’tang-F’tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel? Or will they play it safe, and nominate Jethro Q. Walrustitty?
They really don’t want that to happen. So instead the internal behind the scenes pressure from the RNC will start increasing for other other-rans to drop out instead of getting demoted to the kiddie table. And for the kiddie table people to just bow out entirely.
That entire visual has been an embarrassment for the RNC. They want it to go away.
That sketch seemed hugely meaningful in 2008 and today, jeeze, it’s like one of those Onion articles people don’t realize is a joke. It wasn’t that long ago when The Simpsons used Trump being President as a shorthand for a nightmarish dystopian future. And that future is here, in very nearly honest-to-God major-party-candidate form.
Fuck.