Donald Trump has re-established his commanding lead of the Republican presidential race in a new
Washington Post/ABC News poll.
If anything, the poll shows that Trump's surge seems to be strong and possibly getting stronger. As the Post points out, the poll comes after a "tumultuous period that has included terrorist attacks in Paris, calls for stepped-up efforts to combat Islamic State militants, a backlash against accepting refugees from Syria, and two Republican debates..."
Trump's sizable lead puts him ahead of the popular but controversial Ben Carson. Trump leads the field with 32 percent support among registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. Running second is retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 22 percent. Both figures are identical to last month.
Here are the results:
- Donald Trump: 32 percent
- Ben Carson: 22 percent
- Marco Rubio: 11 percent
- Ted Cruz: 8 percent
- Jeb Bush: 6 percent
- Carly Fiorina: 4 percent
- Mike Huckabee: 3 percent
- John Kasich: 3 percent
- Rand Paul: 3 percent
- Chris Christie 2 percent
- Lindsey Graham: 1 percent
- Rick Santorum: 1 percent
- George Pataki: Under 1 percent
In addition to Carson, Sen. Marco Rubio is the only other Republican in double digits. He has climbed from from 10 to 11 percent since the last Post poll. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas runs fourth, with 8 percent. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has hit his lowest percentage during two years of surveys. No other candidate has more than 4 percent nationally.
Trump also shows no signs of stepping away from controversy or playing politics as usual. On Saturday, he said "trouble's coming out of the mosques" in the United States and "we're being foolish, we're kidding ourselves" if law enforcement doesn't keep close surveillance on those houses of worship.
The Republican presidential candidate says such monitoring is needed as part of a terrorism-fighting strategy — even if there's strong push-back to that idea. He says "we've taken political correctness to a point where we can't do anything as a country anymore."
He told "Fox and Friends" why he thinks it's imperative to conduct such surveillance in the country: "The problem's not coming out of the middle of Sweden. It's not coming out of Norway. It's not coming out of Denmark."
The poll was conducted of registered in the United States between November 16-19 and has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4 percent.
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