Donald Trump continues to zoom in the polls — leaving his Republican competitors for the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination way behind. Unless there’s some break in this trend, it seems Trump could indeed be the Republican nominee and become the face of the 21st century Republican Party:
Donald Trump seems set to end 2015 as the dominant force in the race for next year’s Republican nomination for president, with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz now a clear — yet distant — second after a strong debate performance, a new CNN/ORC poll released on Wednesday has found.
Trump tops the field with 39%, according to the poll of Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters. That’s more than double the share backing Cruz, who, at 18%, has inched up 2 points since the last CNN/ORC poll, which was taken in late November.
Trump has been a constant atop the polls since his ascent to the lead in July, and this new poll marks the first time Cruz stands significantly apart from the other candidates vying for the nomination. Behind those two, Ben Carson and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio have each slipped a few points and now stand tied at 10%.
A Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday found a tighter race between Trump and Cruz, a finding that clashes with most other recent polling on the national race. It is one of only two live interviewer national polls released since Thanksgiving that found Trump with a lead smaller than 10 points. Across the 10 polls released during that time, Trump’s lead over Cruz averages 16 points.
The CNN/ORC poll was conducted after the Republican debate hosted by CNN and Facebook in Las Vegas on December 15. Among those Republicans who say they watched, 33% say Trump did the best job in the debate, 28% Cruz, 13% Rubio. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie follows with 6%. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, widely seen as needing a strong debate performance to boost his standing in the polls, was rated best by just 1% of debate watchers.
Some views on the race:
–-Doug Mataconis:
While conservatives in the GOP base have been willing to accept an ‘establishment’ candidate in the past, the rise of the Tea Party, the frequent revolts against leadership in both the House and the Senate since the 2010 election and, perhaps mostly importantly, the phenomenon of the rise of Donald Trump during this election cycle seems to indicate that hard-core conservatives may not be willing to accept a compromise nominee like they were in the past. Especially telling in this regard is the fact that this wing of the party, as represented by many Tea Party groups and the talk radio crowd, seems to be lining up behind Texas Senator Ted Cruz right now, and rejecting a candidate like Marco Rubio who is arguably just as conservative as Cruz but also has shown the ability to court ties with the so-called ‘establishment’ wing of the party and to make compromises on issues like immigration reform. This is the wing of the party that both Cruz and Trump are appealing to right now, and if the people that make up that wing have their way then they may just get the “conservative” candidate they say they’ve been looking for.
The problem this creates for Republicans should be rather obvious, though. Say what you will about candidates like John McCain and Mitt Romney, but the fact of the matter is that, while they were arguably the most electable candidates in a General Election sense of all the candidates running in the years they won the GOP nomination. If the conservative wing of the party ends up getting its way with a nominee like Ted Cruz or Donald Trump, that won’t be true this time around. At that point, perhaps, they will finally get to test that the key to a Republican winning the White House is to nominate the most conservative candidate and see what happens. Based on everything we know about American politics, the odds are quite high that a Republican Party led by Ted Cruz or Donald Trump would likely find itself handed a loss at least as bad as the one that Michael Dukakis in the 1988 Presidential Election, and that they’d probably lose control of the Senate as they find themselves unable to hold on to even seats that, while somewhat at risk, are certainly winnable in an ordinary year. While it’s unlikely, such a Republican nominee could end up facing a year as disastrous as they did in 1964 or as Democrats did in 1972, 1980, or 1984. Perhaps the GOP needs a defeat like that, one that conservatives can’t blame on the nominee being “too moderate, to purge itself of the instincts that have pulled it this far to the right.
First, it’s national polling, which is reaching the end of its usefulness. The Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary come in less than two months, which means we’re close enough to start screening for likely voters in state polling. That’s actually the second caveat as well — this is a poll of registered voters, not likely voters. That may not make too much difference when it comes to a large lead like Trump’s, but it does make some difference, and it would have a significant impact on the standing of the other candidates.
Maybe another question drills down to likely voters in another way. For those who watched both the undercard and main debate — in other words, committed (or maybe committable?) political junkies — Trump still leads, but only by five points over Cruz, 33/28, and with Rubio the only other candidate in double digits with 13%. Carson falls to 2% in this subsample (±6.5 points, though), tied with Paul and ahead of Bush at 1%. Christie comes in fourth at 6%.
On favorability among all respondents, though, Trump still has a widely negative rating of -18 (39/57), although it is his best showing in this series. He doesn’t come out worst, though; Bush has a -23 (34/57). In the second straight national poll, Cruz comes out on the positive side with a +6 (45/39), which means he’s growing on voters; his previous rating was a -8 at 27/35. Rubio still scores best in the GOP field with a +12 (46/34).
The man who may have the most to cheer from this poll is Ted Cruz, especially as that favorability improvement may impact the state races. Nevertheless, Trump and his supporters have plenty of reason to love this poll … and pretty much every other national poll this year.
graphic via shutterstock.com
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.