Real estate mogul Donald Trump maintained a clear national lead in the race for the Republican nomination while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) continued his surge into second place, according to an online NBC/SurveyMonkey poll released Tuesday.
Support for Trump has increased to 38 percent, a slight increase since last week’s NBC/SurveyMonkey poll and consistent with an upward trend that began in November. This gives him a clear lead over Cruz, who nevertheless has experienced a substantial increase in support since November, when he clearly moved into second place in most national polling.
Cruz’s support in this poll, at 20 percent, shows an increase over last week’s NBC/SurveyMonkey’s survey, which put him at 18 percent. This news comes as a variety of polling has shown him gaining on Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the second-place favorite in New Hampshire, and even pulling ahead of Trump in Iowa.
The NBC/SurveyMonkey poll surveyed 2,852 registered Republicans nationwide from January 4-10, with a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.
Well, sure - if you survey monkeys, these are the sort of results you’re going to get.