The first national poll to come out since the Republican debate last Thursday seem to suggest that Donald Trump has not been damaged by either his debate performance or the comments he has made in the days afterward about Fox News Channel host Megyn Kelly:
Donald Trump’s lead over his Republican presidential rivals grew substantially in the days following the first GOP debate and his controversial comments about moderator Megyn Kelly.
Trump’s support increased by 7 points, to 32 percent, according to the latest Morning Consult tracking poll.
The real estate mogul’s closest rival — former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — lost 1 point, down to 11 percent support among self-identified Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.
Support for all other candidates was in the single digits in the poll.
Trump sparked a media firestorm on Saturday when he accused Kelly, a Fox News host, of behaving unprofessionally and attacking him with unfair questions during Thursday night’s debate.
“She gets out and starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions,” Trump told CNN’s Don Lemon. “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”
From the poll:
Trump’s support shows no evidence of slipping after he told a CNN anchor on Friday night that Kelly, one of three moderators overseeing the Fox News debate, had “blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
In a series of interviews over the weekend, Trump said he didn’t mean to imply Kelly was menstruating when she asked Trump pointed questions about his earlier statements about women. Trump’s Republican rivals stood virtually united in condemning his attack on Kelly, a popular host on the channel that commands attention from a big proportion of the Republican electorate. On Monday, Trump again refused to apologize.
The share of Republican primary voters who say they view Trump favorably increased since the last tracking poll, to 62 percent from 57 percent. But the number of registered voters who say they see Trump unfavorably remains high — 52 percent of all voters say they see him in a negative light. That makes Trump both the most popular candidate within the Republican field and the least popular candidate Republicans could nominate for next year’s general election.
It should be noted that Morning Consult is an online poll, although it purports to use methods to ensure the statistical reliability of its polling that you don’t see in typical online polling. However, the results here are consistent with a similarly conducted poll that was released yesterday by NBC News in conjunction with online polling company Survey Monkey. In that poll, Trump was in the lead with 23%, followed by Ted Cruz at 13%, Ben Carson at 11%, and Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio at 8%, a result which would indicate significant upheaval in the race in the wake of the debate.
That upheaval was seemingly confirmed in a poll released today by Public Policy Polling, which shows Trump leading in the Hawkeye State:
Donald Trump has a healthy lead over the field of Republican presidential candidates in Iowa, according to the first poll of voters in the Hawkeye State since the GOP debate last week.
A new poll from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling released Monday found Trump taking 19 percent support in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Ben Carson are tied for second place at 12 percent support each, followed by Jeb Bush at 11 percent, businesswoman Carly Fiorina at 10 percent and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at 9 percent.
Walker spent months atop the polls in Iowa but in recent weeks has been overtaken by Trump, who has been surging.
Walker led the same poll from April with 23 percent support but has seen his support fall dramatically since Trump’s emergence. Trump’s favorability rating has increased in Iowa from 40 percent in April to 46 percent presently.
Trump leads the GOP field among Evangelical voters, self-described moderates, men, women and voters in every age group. He also leads on the question of who Republican voters believe is the most electable candidate in the general election.
The PPP survey also had good news for Carson and Fiorina, two political outsiders who have never before held elected office.
Carson, who takes 12 percent in the current survey, had been polling in the middle of the pack in Iowa, taking 5.8 percent according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls. He has the best favorability rating in the field at 69 percent positive and 10 percent negative.
Fiorina, who takes 10 percent in the new poll, has for months struggled to take more than 1 percent support in any poll. However, she was the consensus winner of Fox News’s undercard debate last Thursday and is believed by many to be primed for a breakout.
Fiorina’s favorability rating shot up from 30 percent in April to 56 percent presently.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee came in at 6 percent support each. No other candidates surpassed 3 percent support.
That’s a disappointing showing for Rubio, who was lauded by many pundits as one of the standout performers at the prime-time debate. He is among the biggest fallers in the poll, dropping from 13 percent in April to 6 percent presently.
It will take more polling over the coming days and weeks to be able to really judge what impact the debate has had on the race, of course, but so far at least it doesn’t look as though the Trump bubble will be popping any time soon, and it seems likely that we’ll be seeing a shakeup further down the race that could end up impacting who shows up in the main debate on September 16th.
