Four recent polls show Donald Trump trailing retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson in Iowa. Still, the outspoken billionaire told voters at a town hall Monday he’s confident he’s still ahead.
“I don’t believe I did fall behind [Carson],” Trump told ABC’s Matt Lauer at the event in Atkinson, N.H. He noted that just last week, thousands of supporters attended one of his signature Make America Great Again rallies in Iowa.
Nevertheless, a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll released last Friday showed Carson soaring to 28 percent support among likely Republican caucus-goers in Iowa while Trump fell to 19 percent.
“The Des Moines Register is a terrible paper,” Trump told Lauer.
“I have other polls in Iowa that say I am winning,” he added, without offering specifics.
Carson’s new edge in the earliest voting state is due, in large part, to his growing appeal among evangelical voters. A Quinnipiac University poll released last week, among those showing Carson in first place in Iowa, found the accomplished doctor receiving 36 percent of the white, evangelical vote in the Hawkeye State – more than twice that of Trump, who earns 17 percent support among the religious demographic.
“I am doing well with tea partiers and evangelicals,” Trump maintained during the town hall.
During a weekend rally in Florida, he appeared to suggest his Presbyterian faith was more “down the middle” than Carson’s affiliation with Seventh-day Adventism.
“I love Iowa. And, look, I don’t have to say it, I’m Presbyterian. Can you believe it?” Trump asked supporters Saturday in Jacksonville.
“Boy, that’s down the middle of the road folks, in all fairness. I mean, Seventh-day Adventist, I don’t know about. I just don’t know about,” he added.
The Republican front-runner has since refused to apologize to Carson.
“I would certainly give an apology if I said something bad about it. But I didn’t. All I said was I don’t know about it,” he said Sunday on ABC.
