Donald Trump dominates the new Monmouth national poll of the Republican presidential race — in every category except one.
Trump leads the horse race, with 30 percent, to Ben Carson’s 18 percent, with Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz tied for third at 8 percent. (Marco Rubio is next at 5 percent, Carly Fiorina at 4 percent, and Scott Walker is at 3 percent.) Trump leads among various subgroups sorted by ideology, policy preference, and age. And he leads in head-to-head matchups with other Republican candidates.
Except one. The pollsters asked who voters would choose if the race for the Republican nomination were between Trump and a single other candidate. Trump prevailed over Bush (56-37), over Walker (53-38), over Cruz (48-41), over Rubio (52-38), and the rest of the field, except for Carson. In a Trump-Carson matchup, Trump loses handily, with 36 percent to Carson’s 55. That’s a pretty vivid measure of Carson’s appeal.
The poll shows a few other things. Perhaps the most striking is the fall of Walker, whose three percent rating is down eight points from his 11 percent rating in August. In addition, Rand Paul is now down to two percent, from six percent in July. On the other hand, Cruz and Fiorina are steadily climbing, each up two points from last month. And Marco Rubio, now at 5 percent, remains down from his high of 9 percent in June.
One other thing. Three candidates have seen their favorability ratings go down in the last month: Bush, from 52 percent to 41 percent; Walker, from 50 percent to 42 percent; and John Kasich, from 27 percent to 23 percent.
