Posted on 12/10/2015 10:09:58 AM PST by conservativejoy
Donald Trump gets his highest rating in the CBS/New York Times polling series, while Ben Carson's slide has become unmistakable. Ted Cruz has moved into second place with 16%, making his move with evangelicals. Trump gets 35% of the respondents to support him, but CBS notes that most of the interviews for this poll took place prior to Trump's call for a ban on entry for Muslims to the US:
Thirty-five percent of Republican primary voters support Trump, up 13 points since October, and his highest level of support in CBS News polling. Ted Cruz (16 percent) has moved into second place, while Ben Carson, who led the October poll, has dropped to third.
Marco Rubio is in fourth place with 9 percent. Jeb Bush is getting the backing of just 3 percent of Republican primary voters nationwide, his lowest percentage to date in CBS News polling. Carly Fiorina's support has also dropped; she is at just 1 percent now.
Most of the interviews for this poll were conducted before Trump made statements concerning a ban on Muslims entering the United States.
Would that have made a 19-point difference , or even a 13-point difference, which is the amount gained by Trump between the previous poll and this one? Probably not. Trump's 13-point gain in this series exactly matches Carson’s 13-point drop in it over the same period of time, and that appears to parallel the recent shift in focus to national security. Trump's bombast makes him sound like a leader, or really more of a bully and braggart, but the vacuum of leadership in this country on national security has voters hungry for anything that even resembles confidence and leadership. Carson doesn't project that, and foreign policy has been his weak point all along.
rcp-carson-fade
It's not quite a plunge, but Carson is suffering from a definite fade. Both Cruz and Marco Rubio are possibly getting a little benefit from that, but on this chart it seems clear that Carson's voters are migrating toward Trump. That makes sense; both candidates represent the demand for someone outside the established GOP roster, so one's fade will be the other's boon, at least for the moment.
Cruz and Rubio may be getting at least some of their boost from the dissipation of support from the rest of the field. The CBS/NYT poll has Jeb Bush at 3% and Carly Fiorina all the way down to 1%, which isn't far off from their RCP averages, either. That makes the upcoming CNN debate rather interesting. Remember, the criteria to make the main stage requires candidates to have at least 3.5% in national polling, and 4% in average polling in either New Hampshire or Iowa [see update]. In the last five polls in the RCP listing, Bush has an average of 3.6%. Chris Christie averages 2.5% over the same period, and Fiorina gets a 2.2% average. CNN's decision depends on which polls they choose for their average, of course, but right now it looks like the main debate will have at most five contestants, and Bush is a big maybe on the cusp.
CBS and the NYT will release the crosstabs this evening, so Allahpundit may revisit this. One can be certain that the campaigns, and CNN, will be parsing these results very, very carefully, too.
LOL! That’s “CBS” I manages to delete the “C”!! This may be more accurate.
I completely forgot about Carson until today. It is amazing how quickly he has disappeared.
I think Carson has a place in a new administration - just not at the top. He doesn’t have the real world experience in dealing with the cast of characters a POTUS has to deal with.
Patton @Bastogne predicted that Carson would be in single digits by mid December. I think he’s right.
Patton nailed it!
Big take away from this is the sentence that says it looks like the Main Stage of the next debate will have only Five candidates on it!
yes, good call. Actually, I had wrongly predicted that several of the single-digit guys would have dropped already, including Paul, Christie, Santorum, Bush, etc.
For the life of me I will never understand the Carson spike.
A CBS/NYT poll no less. GO TRUMP GO
The solution....Do something similar to the refugee camp set up at Fort Ontario in 1944.
And if you don't think we're at war with Muslims, you're kidding yourself.
It's like any other war...there are warriors and there are the remainders who support them in one way or another.
Islam is not a religion. Wake Up!!
And they mention this because they think it means he will go down. How stupid are these people. He will be over 40 percent in the next poll.
He seems all knowing. I am somewhat shocked.
You are prob right.
I think it was a phony spike following on the heels of Trump saying he would drop out if he was down in the polls.
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GOP 2016 Predictions : Ben Carson at 7.5 % by Christmas — Yeb Bush Waterloo in Florida Defeat !
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3356989/posts
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For the life of me I will never understand the Carson spike.
FIve candidates at most, and Bush is on the cusp. So Trump, Cruz, Carson, Rubio, and possibly Bush. This should both make the main debate more interesting and the undercard more relevant to finally getting more of the riff-raff out. My one concern is that things may become narrowed down to Trump, Cruz, and a single establishment candidate too quickly.
You overestimate the integrity of the puppetmasters. There is no cusp for the Jebster. The bar will be set as low as it needs to in order for whomever they want on stage to be there.
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