Will Ben Carson fire Donald Trump as Republican front-runner?
According to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, Carson now tops the GOP field nationally, winning over 29 percent of Republican voters to Donald Trump’s 23 percent. This is now the second poll in two weeks to show Trump’s grip over the GOP field might be slipping.
In the new survey, Carson enjoys a seven point bounce from the previous poll taken by NBC/WSJ in mid October, which saw Trump lead 25-22 — though Carson still trails Trump in the Washington Examiner power rankings. Trump had led every poll conducted by the two outlets since June.
Following the two outsider candidates are Sen. Marco Rubio with 11 percent of the vote and Sen. Ted Cruz with 10 percent. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is next with 8 percent. No other GOP candidate in the field garners more than 3 percent support in the poll.
Carson also enjoys a healthy lead and broad support of GOP voters as he is now the first candidate to enjoy majority support as the first or second choice of the GOP field, with 50 percent backing him in one of the slots. Meanwhile, Trump is the first or second choice of 35 percent of voters, with Rubio and Cruz at 24 and 23 percent, respectively, in that category.
The poll was conducted from Oct. 25-29, meaning only a fraction of those participating in the survey were polled after the Oct. 28 debate.
The result is similar to last week’s CBS/New York Times poll, which was the first in over 100 days to find Trump out of the top spot. Carson led that poll with 26 percent to Trump’s 22.
