Billionaire Donald Trump has an 18-point advantage over his nearest rival, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, according to a nationwide NBC/SurveyMonkey poll released Friday.
Support for Trump stood at 39 percent in the poll, while Rubio was at 21 percent andclosely trailed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) at 19 percent. The two other candidates, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, both languished in the single digits.
This represents a slightly wider lead for Trump since the previous iteration of the same poll in mid-February showed him at 36 percent, followed by Cruz at 19 percent and Rubio at 16 percent.
As Super Tuesday approaches, this poll also reaffirms what virtually all state-by-state polling of those contests has suggested: Trump stands on the verge of substantial wins in nearly every state where voters go to the polls on March 1.
TPM’s PollTracker Average shows Trump leading at 36.1 percent, followed by Cruz at 19.6 percent and Rubio at 16.7 percent.
The NBC/SurveyMonkey poll was carried out online from Feb. 24-25. Pollsters surveyed 6433 registered voters with a margin of error of 1.9 percentage points.
