The unexpected surge of Ben Carson, the low-profile African-American neurosurgeon, seems to continue unabated in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
After surprising pundits by dislodging billionaire businessman Donald Trump as the Republican front-runner in a national poll last week, the soft-spoken Carson has expanded his lead in a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, released on Tuesday.
The retired neurosurgeon is now said to enjoy the support of 29 per cent of Republican primary voters as against Trump’s 23 per cent, followed by Senator Marco Rubio (11 per cent), Senator Ted Cruz (10 per cent) and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush (8 per cent).
Support for Carson, a political outsider like Trump, has tripled since July, according to this latest poll.
The findings are broadly similar to last week’s New York Times/CBS poll that found Carson to have got past Trump (26-22) for the first time in more than 100 days of this election cycle ahead of the presidential primaries commencing in February.
The NBC/WSJ poll was conducted between October 25-29, that is both before and after last week’s third Republican presidential debate hosted by CNBC.
Carson, according to this poll, not only leads the Republican field, but has also become the first to get majority support as either a first or second choice among Republican primary voters.
“A combined 50 per cent of Republican voters pick Carson as either their first or second choice in the GOP presidential race — followed by 35 per cent for Trump, 24 per cent for Rubio and 23 per cent for Cruz,” the pollsters said, commenting that Carson “has broad support, but we don’t know yet the depth and commitment of that support”.
The badly-trailing Bush, meanwhile, has launched what his campaign is projecting as a comeback bid. Bush, who started as the presumed front-runner earlier this year, has been at the receiving end of Trump’s relentless verbal attacks.