It’s official: Ted Cruz leads the polls in Iowa less than two months before the caucuses and may very well be in the lead for the Republican nomination. The newest poll from the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg has the Texas senator with 30 percent support among likely GOP caucusgoers, placing Cruz 10 points ahead of New York businessman Donald Trump at 21 percent. Trailing Cruz and Trump in the DMR poll, released Saturday, is Ben Carson, the one-time leader in Iowa who has seen a persistent slide in the last couple of weeks there. Florida senator Marco Rubio places fourth, with 10 percent support, while the remainder of the field sit in single digits.
Meanwhile, a new Fox News poll released Sunday confirms the trend of the DMR poll, with Fox finding Cruz with a smaller lead over Trump, 28 percent to 26 percent. Rubio comes in third place with 13 percent while Carson is in fourth with 10 percent. One Republican pollster notes that among those who told Fox News they would “definitely” attend a Republican caucus, there’s even greater affinity for Cruz: 32 percent support him compared with 25 percent for Trump and 12 percent for both Rubio and Carson.
Both polls are the latest in several recent polls to show Cruz in the lead, and with it, the Real Clear Politics average of polls for Iowa has given Cruz his first lead there. Trump maintains his second place position in the RCP average.
Cruz rise in Iowa has come as a result of the candidate’s intense focus on the state’s socially conservative and evangelical Christian voters, two groups that constitute a significant portion of the Republican electorate. The Cruz campaign has been able to tap into a network of pastors and home-school activists that have helped previous candidates win the Iowa caucuses.
The winners of the preceding two Republican Iowa caucuses, Rick Santorum in 2012 and Mike Huckabee in 2008, were unable to exchange victory there for a ticket to the nomination. But there may be reason to think Cruz might have more staying power—perhaps even the inside track to become the nominee—if he wins on February 1.
The reason? Donald Trump, who even before the results of the DMR poll were released Saturday was preemptively pooh-poohing the newspaper’s record on polling. If Cruz can maintain the lead he’s just earned in Iowa, the loss for longtime leader Trump there will make New Hampshire’s primary less than a week later all the more important for the Donald.
And in the Granite State, there’s so far been no sign of a singular challenger to Trump’s dominance there as Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and John Kasich have divided a Republican vote that’s traditionally gone to a more establishment-friendly candidate that counters the results in Iowa. Without a breakout performance by one of those alternatives to Trump in New Hampshire along the lines of Cruz’s in Iowa, Trump could win there and seize a “comeback narrative”—a possibility likely keeping Republican party leaders up at night. At that point, Cruz may look like the establishment’s best shot at keeping Trump away from the nomination. If Republican voters and party leaders begin to believe Cruz can win in a general election, too, expect to see a detente between the party establishment and the conservative establishment.
