Regardless of his knack for triggering one controversy after another, billionaire businessman Donald Trump continues to confound pollsters and pundits by surging in poll after poll.
If the two latest polls, released by CNN on Wednesday and Reuters on Tuesday, are any indication, the Republican front-runner is all set to head into 2016 with a massive lead in a crowded field, having notched up more votes than his top three rivals combined.
Trump was at a commanding 39 per cent in the CNN-ORC poll of Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters, with immediate rival Senator Ted Cruz trailing at 18 per cent, followed by neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Senator Marco Rubio, with both tied at 10 per cent.
In the Reuters’ five-day rolling poll, Trump led with 36.7 per cent support, followed by Carson (11.3 per cent), Cruz (11 per cent) and Rubio (8.3 per cent).
The one ray of hope for Trump’s challengers was held out by a Quinnipiac University poll, also released on Tuesday, which pointed to a tighter race, with Trump still on top at 28 per cent, followed by Cruz at 24 per cent, Rubio at 12 per cent and Carson at 10 per cent.
Trump has been a constant atop the polls since he shot into the lead in July, less than a month after he entered the race. The CNN poll, conducted after the Republican debate in las Vegas on December 15, found Trump is being seen by Republican voters as the candidate best able to handle the economy, illegal immigration and ISIS.
The poll speaks of a consolidation finally starting to emerge in voters’ overall preferences. The field is beginning to narrow, with four aspirants having quit the Republican race so far. Senator lindsey Graham became the latest to troop out this week, following in the footsteps of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, former Texas Governor Rick Perry and louisiana’s Indian-American Governor Bobby Jindal.
There are still 12 aspirants in the Republican fray, with as many as eight of them still struggling in single-digit level of support. That includes former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who was widely regarded as the front-runner in the early part of this year. Expectations are that more candidates will drop out in the coming weeks.
Senator Cruz, who has steadily advanced in polls and reached the No. 2 slot, believes that the contest may well be turning into “a two-man race” between the two of them.
Trump, meanwhile, has sought to dismiss media accounts that he, at his campaign rally in Michigan on Monday night, used a vulgar term to describe Hillary Clinton’s loss of the Democratic race to Barack Obama in 2008.
Facing a barrage of criticism in newspapers and television networks, Trump asserted in a Twitter post on Tuesday that the word in question was “not vulgar”, blaming the “dishonest” mainstream media for giving it “false meaning”. At his rally, Trump also attacked Clinton for lacking the strength and stamina to be the President.
Reacting to Trump’s remarks, Clinton said in an interview to Des Moines Register: “Nothing really surprises me anymore (about Trump). I don’t know that he has any boundaries at all. His bigotry, his bluster, his bullying have become his campaign. And he has to keep sort of upping the stakes and going even further.”