Weekly tracking poll: Trump, Clinton still way ahead

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton continue to lead their respective fields nationally, according to the NBC|SurveyMonkey weekly online tracking poll. Methodology: This SurveyMonkey Election Tracking data for the week of Jan. 11-17, 2016 was conducted online among a national sample of among a national sample of 11,579 adults aged 18 and over, including 10,320 who say they are registered to vote. Respondents for this survey were selected from the nearly three million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day. Data for this week has been weighted for age, race, sex, education, region, and voter registration status using the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statisticâ€™s Current Population Survey to reflect the demographic composition of the United States.

Trump is dominating because he is energizing new, non-traditional and crossover voters. His supporters, as a group, are well to the left of the other GOP candidates. This is masked by his dominance on the immigration issue, which attracts support on the right. He is drawing significant populist and anti-establishment support from both ends of the spectrum.

Cruz appears to be locking down the movement conservative and religious right groups. Unless he stumbles badly in the early primaries, he seems poised to be the conservative horse down the stretch.

The wild card this year has been the collapse of the moderate center-right establishment candidates. Jeb was supposed to have this sewn up. His camp is now hoping for a miracle. The centrist votes, which constitute a plurality of the GOP electorate, remain badly split. Rubio and Christie are probably the best bets to emerge here.

The first issue will be whether Cruz, Rubio, or Christie is left standing as the alternative to Trump. The second will be whether the moderate and conservative wings can overcome their well-practiced animosity in time to unite. If they don't, and Rubio-Christie-Bush supporters flock to Trump out of a distaste for the religious right and tea party factions (or vice versa, due to a movement conservative revolt against the establishment), we could end up nominating the most liberal candidate in the field. Merely because the center-right and right got carried away by their own spat.

No, not a great analysis. Trump is supposedly liberal on some things, but Rush had a great discussion of this yesterday. Because Trump is a) out in front on so many issues conservatives care about, and b) is perceived or believed to be the only one who will act on them, he is in fact getting the plurality of the "conservative" and often even "very conservative" vote.

Look at the last 2-3 "Overtime Politics" state polls on this. They have a good breakdown of "conservative" and "very conservative." In FL, for example---doing this from memory---Trump led Cruz among very conservative voters. Why?

I think while Rush did a great job of explaining Trump's attraction to them yesterday, he completely ignored the elephant in the room (no pun), namely, "why, in poll after poll, is Trump either ahead or very close to Cruz among these very conservative and conservative voters?" I think you can guess the answers on that.

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