Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush continues his free fall nationally among Republicans, a Monmouth University poll released Tuesday found.
“The money train may be chugging along for the Bush campaign, but the polling train has been steadily losing steam,” Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute in West Long Branch, New Jersey, said in a statement accompanying the poll.
Bush, the establishment GOP’s long-anointed pick for nominee, polled at just 5 percent, barely edging out former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who each polled at 4 percent.
Bush’s standing has fallen in every successive Monmouth poll since July, when he led the GOP field with 15 percent. His current standing is a full 10 points lower than it was when the slide began.
Real estate mogul Donald Trump retained his frontrunner status in the Republican presidential race while leads the national poll of Republican voters with 28 percent support, followed by retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 18 percent and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) at 10 percent. Carly Fiorina and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) ranked in the middle of the pack, with 6 percent each.
The Monmouth University Polling Institute surveyed 1,012 adults from Oct. 15-18 via telephone. The GOP horse race was based on a sample of 348 registered voters who self-identified as Republicans or as leaning toward the Republican Party. The poll of GOP respondents has a margin of error of 5.3 percent.
