Real estate mogul Donald Trump woke up to good news Tuesday morning: The candidate posted a 17-point lead in the national NBC News/Survey Monkey poll.
Trump earned 35 percent and was trailed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) at 18 percent and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) at 13 percent.
The real estate mogul also handily led various demographics, including men (39 percent), women (29 percent) and white evangelicals (33 percent).
Among Republican and Republican-leaning respondents who might change their mind, Cruz was the most popular second choice at 22 percent.
The online poll was conducted by the Data Analytics Lab of NBC News in conjunction with Penn’s Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies. The poll was conducted from Dec. 28-Jan. 3 among 3,700 adults nationally, 949 of whom claimed to be registered Republican voters. The margin of error was 3.7 percentage points.
Trump had earned a 21-point lead in a CNN/ORC national poll released Dec. 23.
