A new national poll from Public Policy Polling has celebrity Donald Trump building on his strong lead among candidates for the Republican Party presidential nomination.
The survey has Trump at 29 percent, with surgeon Ben Carson at 15 percent in second place. No one else in the GOP field gets double digits, with Jeb Bush at 9 percent sitting in third.
It’s significant to point out that the two leading candidates at this still-early stage in the race are political neophytes. Their appeal is to a GOP electorate that largely thinks Barack Obama is a Muslim who was not born in the U.S. – 66 percent of Trump supporters think Obama is a Muslim, and 61 percent think he was not born in the U.S.
Sixty-three percent want to amend the Constitution to eliminate birthright citizenship, an issue that Trump has made a centerpiece of his nativist campaign.
The overall GOP electorate is not much different: 54 percent think Obama is Muslim, and 29 percent think he wasn’t born in the U.S., less than the 40 percent who think Republican candidate Ted Cruz was born in the U.S. Cruz, of course, was born in Canada.
Down the ticket, Carly Fiorina was fourth at 8 percent, with the rest of the top 10 featuring Marco Rubio at 7 percent, Ted Cruz and John Kasich at 6 percent, Mike Huckabee and Scott Walker at 5 percent, and Chris Christie and Rick Santorum tied for 10th at 2 percent.
– Story by Chris Graham
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