Businessman Donald Trump was back on top of the Republican presidential contest according to a national poll released Monday by the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
The survey, conducted by YouGov America under the direction of the UMass Poll, found that Trump polled at 31 percent among likely GOP primary voters compared to retired surgeon Ben Carson’s 22 percent. The closest opponent of the battling frontrunners was Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) at 13 percent while Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) polled at 9 percent.
When asked who their second choice for the Republican nomination would be, respondents who supported Trump chose Carson and vice versa. Trump and Carson also were the overwhelming choices for the candidates who have the best chance at winning at 40 and 24 percent, respectively, according to the survey.
YouGov’s polling uses a pre-selected pool of registered voters, with respondents selected at random from that pool. The margin of error was 6.4 percentage points among likely Republican primary voters.
March on to Victory, GOP Voters! Everybody in Umerika hates Hitlery and Obummer sooooo much that your victory is inevitable and assured, no matter who you nominate! Everyone you know agrees, so it must be true!
Oh, the bitter tears we liberals will be crying on election night when Trump receives a higher percentage of the white vote than any candidate ever and legitimate government once again returns to a suffering nation!
At this point, I’m starting to think that the GOP establishment has really given up on the race for the WH. They’ll control the House until at least 2020, the Senate may still be in their hands after 2016 and they’ve managed to bring important legislation to a total standstill. Why bother too hard when they’re already gaining in running the country?
The pundits have just been so wrong about the Republican race it’s amazing. Everything they’ve predicted has been wrong. And now that every one of their justifications as to why Trump/Carson cannot win the nomination are not valid anymore (e.g. Trump has a lot of voters, but when candidates start dropping out they won’t vote for Trump…which as we see is completely false, considering trump gets Carson voters and vice versa), they’ve resorted to Trump/Carson cannot win because…
The one thing they are unwilling to accept is reality. Which is one of the 2 major political parties has gone completely off the deep end. Something that has been obvious to at least half of America ever since Obama’s election.
And the two non-pols STILL have a total over half - tho, jJUST over half, like always.
The third most resilient feature of all these polls since mid-summer has been one of Trump in the lead. That’s been the general trend - overwhelming the most, but not abolute.
The 2nd and 1st fmost haven;t been general trends but instead, absolutes:
(2) one the other of Trump and Carson is always on top,
(1) the total support for non-pols has not been at or under near 50%, but always just over 50%.
And has to mean one of 2 things: (A) that just over half of all self-identifying Republicans prefer to see someone OTHER than an elected Republican in the White House, or (B) just over half of them are convinced that the GOP can’t win the White House with anyone in this race who’s ever been elected to state or national office.
How is that ‘real’? It’s real in the sense of reflecting a real anxiety that none of the elected pols is up to defeating the Dem nominee, certainly not HRC and maybe not even Sanders. But at the same time it’s a remarkably resilient and stubborn conviction OF a slight majority of GOPers - that is, OF, as Jindal has put it, “the stupid party”.
IOW, the biggest evidence is that they really are the party of stupid.
They would actually be wise to do this - just let the fever dream run it’s course, because even their mainstream “serious” candidates don’t have much of a shot against Hillary. The GOP is overdue for another Goldwater moment and the purists need to finish up the circular firing squad. They can continue, with the gerrymander of the house, to stymie most of our agenda.