The results of a new poll show that Donald Trump's stock is rising among Republican voters, with nearly one-third supporting him in the crowded field of GOP candidates.
A YouGov survey found that 28 percent of registered Republican voters would vote for Trump as their first choice, more than any of the other 15 Republican candidates in the race. That figure is up from the 15 percent who said they would support him in another YouGov poll earlier this month — a poll that Trump also led.
A distant second to Trump in the latest survey is former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (14 percent); followed by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (13 percent); and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson (7 percent).
When combined with the percentage of voters who said they would vote for the candidate as their second choice, Trump leads the field with 38 percent; ahead of Walker (25 percent); Bush (20 percent); and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (19 percent).
Trump's surging numbers come in the wake of comments he made about Arizona Sen. John McCain, also a Republican. Last weekend,
Trump questioned McCain's status as a war hero during a speech at the Iowa Family Leadership Summit.
A Navy pilot, McCain was shot down during the Vietnam War and spent more than five years as a prisoner of war.
"He's not a war hero," Trump said. "He's a war hero because he was captured? I like people who weren't captured. ... Perhaps he is a war hero, but right now, he said some very bad things about a lot of people."
Trump's comments ignited a firestorm of criticism from politicians and presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a friend of McCain's and another Republican candidate for president,
called Trump a "jackass" for calling McCain's military service into question.
Trump responded by publicly revealing what he said was
Graham's phone number, which Graham had some fun with by
recording a video of himself destroying several phones.
In another poll taken earlier this week, 52 percent of likely Republican voters said they viewed Trump at least somewhat favorably, compared to 51 percent who said the same about McCain. However, 26 percent said they hold a very favorable view of Trump, while 14 percent said so about McCain.
Yet another poll this week,
conducted by Public Policy Polling, found that Trump had 19 percent of voters' support in the GOP race, compared to 17 percent for Walker.