Mitch Perry
An online Reuters/Ipso poll of 278 self-identified Republicans taken after Thursday night’s GOP presidential debate continues to show New York City real estate magnate Donald Trump dominating the GOP presidential field nationally.
The survey has Trump at 24 percent, double the support of the next closest Republican, Jeb Bush, who is at 12 percent. That’s down from 17 percent from a Reuters/Ipso poll done before the Cleveland debates.
Four candidates are tied for third with 8 percent support, including Marco Rubio.
The poll doesn’t break down where every candidate stands, but the pollsters say that voters were more likely to say the debate had improved their opinions of Rubio, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Only Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul appears to have been hurt, as 8 percent said their opinion of him improved while 22 percent said they felt more negative.
The online poll of 278 self-identified Republicans has a credibility interval of 6.7 percentage points.
Meanwhile, a new Public Policy Polling survey finds Trump leading in Iowa, the home of the nation’s first caucus next February. He’s at 19 percent to 12 percent for Carson and Walker, 11 percent for Bush, 10 percent for Fiorina, 9 percent for Cruz, and 6 percent for Huckabee and Rubio.
The other nine candidates are all clustered between 3 percent and having no support at all (George Pataki). John Kasich and Paul are at 3 percent, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum at 2 percent, Chris Christie at 1 percent , and Jim Gilmore, Lindsey Graham, and Pataki all have less than 1 percent.
The PPP survey shows that Trump’s favorability rating isn’t that much better than it was four months ago. It’s 46/40 now, and was 40/40 in April. But he’s up with evangelicals, men, women, voters in every age group, moderates, voters who are most concerned with having the candidate who is most conservative on the issues, and voters who are most concerned about having a candidate who can win the general election.
PPP says the biggest winner coming out of the debates was Florina. Her favorability rating is now 56/15, compared to 30/15 in April.
The poll also shows Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, 52-25 percent.
Public Policy Polling surveyed 619 usual Republican primary voters and 567 usual Democratic primary voters from Aug. 7 to 9. The margin of error for the Republicans is +/-3.9 percent and for the Democrats it’s +/-4.1 percent. 80 percent of participants responded via telephone, while 20 percent of respondents who did not have landlines conducted the survey over the internet.
