After spending $1 million in Iowa to tear down Donald Trump, the Club for Growth is out with a new poll of 500 likely caucus goers showing the Republican front-runner has blown his lead.
The survey, conducted over the weekend by the club’s longtime pollster, Basswood Research, showed the New York billionaire businessman and reality television star trailing Ben Carson by five points. The retired pediatric neurosurgeon led the pack at 21 percent, followed by Trump at 16 percent, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida at 11 percent and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, both at 10 percent. The survey’s margin of error was plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
“The more [voters] hear about Trump’s record, the more they reject it,” the Club for Growth’s press release stated gleefully about the cause and effect it believes its attack ads have had on Trump’s standing.
Basswood is a reputable outfit, but this poll should be approached with one major caveat: The only candidates surveyed were those who have participated in at least one of the two prime time televised debates, with the exeption of former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who won the caucuses in 2012. That means Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who has been rising in most recent Iowa polls, wasn’t on the ballot or favorabilty tests included in this Saturday-Sunday poll.
A spokesman for the club confirmed this to the Washington Examiner on Tuesday but did not explain why it chose to exclude candidates from the poll who have been relegated to the so-called happy-hour debates broadcast by Fox News in August and CNN in September. With that in mind, here’s how the Club for Growth poll rounds out after the top five: Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas was at 5 percent; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the winner of the 2008 caucuses, was at 3 percent; Ohio Gov. John Kasich was at 2 percent; Santorum and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky were both at 1 percent; and 18 percent were undecided.
Trump still leads the RealClearPolitics.com average of Iowa polls, followed by Carson, Fiorina, Cruz and Rubio. Additionally, Trump, who is No. 1 in the Examiner’s presidential power rankings, was in front in the three recent polls included in the RCP Iowa average. Still, it could be argued that the Club for Growth’s new poll fits recent trends that have shown Trump’s numbers dropping — and revealed that he has among the lowest personal favorability ratings in the Republican field, certainly of any of the front-runners.
As with other polls, Carson led in favorabilty with an 80.8 percent rating, followed by Rubio at 75.4 percent; Fiorina at 70.8 percent; Huckabee at 64.6 percent; Cruz at 59.6 percent; Bush at 56.2 percent; and Trump at 53 percent. Favorability is important because it can be a reliable indicator of a candidate’s room to grow his support with the electorate.
The club, a free-market advocacy organization that often backs candidates defined as more conservative in GOP primaries, is usually not this active in Republican presidential nominating contests. But the group has been particularly alarmed by Trump’s populist rhetoric and history of supporting liberal policies, like nationalized, government-run healthcare. Plus, Trump and the club have been embroiled in a feud stemming from a meeting between the candidate and David McIntosh, the organization’s president, back in the spring.
Trump claims the club is after him because he spurned a request for a $1 million donation. The club adamantly denies this charge.
