Billionaire Donald Trump has a substantial national lead over all other contenders in the Republican presidential contest, according to an NBC/SurveyMonkey poll released Tuesday.
The online poll showed support for Trump at 39 percent. The second-place contender, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), stood at 17 percent, still with a comfortable lead over Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who took third place with 10 percent of support. No other candidate was above single digits.
Trump’s 22-point lead indicates that his position at the top of the nationwide polls, which began in late summer and has remained consistent in virtually all polling throughout most of the fall, remains stable and comfortably far from the reach of even the next-most popular candidates. His support remains little changed since the last NBC/SurveyMonkey poll earlier this month, when he took 38 percent.
Cruz, who had surged since September in national and especially Iowa polls, has fallen back a bit since the last NBC/SurveyMonkey poll. Cruz is down from 20 percent of support in the previous poll. Nevertheless, his hold on second place has not been challenged in any of the four iterations of this poll taken since late December. This is consistent with many national polls, which show his position solidifying in second place.
The NBC/SurveyMonkey poll was taken from Jan. 18-24. Pollsters surveyed 2,327 registered Republicans online, with a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points.
