Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has sailed past Donald Trump and Ben Carson in Iowa to become the front-runner in the intensifying race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, according to a
Monmouth University poll released Monday.
The new numbers, based on a survey of 425 Iowa voters likely to attend the Republican presidential caucuses in February, reveal:
- Ted Cruz 24 percent
- Donald Trump 19 percent
- Marco Rubio 17 percent
- Ben Carson 13 percent
- Jeb Bush 6 percent
- Rand Paul 4 percent
- Carly Fiorina 3 percent
- John Kasich 3 percent
Monmouth said Carson had the steepest decline of any candidate, plummeting 19 points from a poll two months ago which had him as front-runner.
And it marks the first time Cruz has held a lead in any of the crucial early primary states, according to Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute in West Long Branch, NJ.
"As Ben Carson's stock has fallen, Cruz has been able to corral most of those voters," Murray said.
As far as Trump's decline, the billionaire developer will need "a huge organizational effort to get independent voters to show up in a contest where they have historically participated in small numbers," he said.
"Without this dynamic, the underlying fundamentals appear to favor Cruz and Rubio."
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