First Post-Debate Polls Show Donald Trump Still Leading
The first national poll to come out since the Republican debate last Thursday seem to suggest that Donald Trump has not been damaged by either his debate performance or the comments he has made in the days afterward about Fox News Channel host Megyn Kelly:
Donald Trump’s lead over his Republican presidential rivals grew substantially in the days following the first GOP debate and his controversial comments about moderator Megyn Kelly.
Trump’s support increased by 7 points, to 32 percent, according to the latest Morning Consult tracking poll.
The real estate mogul’s closest rival — former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — lost 1 point, down to 11 percent support among self-identified Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.
Support for all other candidates was in the single digits in the poll.
Trump sparked a media firestorm on Saturday when he accused Kelly, a Fox News host, of behaving unprofessionally and attacking him with unfair questions during Thursday night’s debate.
“She gets out and starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions,” Trump told CNN’s Don Lemon. “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”
From the poll:
Trump’s support shows no evidence of slipping after he told a CNN anchor on Friday night that Kelly, one of three moderators overseeing the Fox News debate, had “blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
In a series of interviews over the weekend, Trump said he didn’t mean to imply Kelly was menstruating when she asked Trump pointed questions about his earlier statements about women. Trump’s Republican rivals stood virtually united in condemning his attack on Kelly, a popular host on the channel that commands attention from a big proportion of the Republican electorate. On Monday, Trump again refused to apologize.
The share of Republican primary voters who say they view Trump favorably increased since the last tracking poll, to 62 percent from 57 percent. But the number of registered voters who say they see Trump unfavorably remains high — 52 percent of all voters say they see him in a negative light. That makes Trump both the most popular candidate within the Republican field and the least popular candidate Republicans could nominate for next year’s general election.
It should be noted that Morning Consult is an online poll, although it purports to use methods to ensure the statistical reliability of its polling that you don’t see in typical online polling. However, the results here are consistent with a similarly conducted poll that was released yesterday by NBC News in conjunction with online polling company Survey Monkey. In that poll, Trump was in the lead with 23%, followed by Ted Cruz at 13%, Ben Carson at 11%, and Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio at 8%, a result which would indicate significant upheaval in the race in the wake of the debate.
That upheaval was seemingly confirmed in a poll released today by Public Policy Polling, which shows Trump leading in the Hawkeye State:
Donald Trump has a healthy lead over the field of Republican presidential candidates in Iowa, according to the first poll of voters in the Hawkeye State since the GOP debate last week.
A new poll from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling released Monday found Trump taking 19 percent support in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Ben Carson are tied for second place at 12 percent support each, followed by Jeb Bush at 11 percent, businesswoman Carly Fiorina at 10 percent and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at 9 percent.
Walker spent months atop the polls in Iowa but in recent weeks has been overtaken by Trump, who has been surging.
Walker led the same poll from April with 23 percent support but has seen his support fall dramatically since Trump’s emergence. Trump’s favorability rating has increased in Iowa from 40 percent in April to 46 percent presently.
Trump leads the GOP field among Evangelical voters, self-described moderates, men, women and voters in every age group. He also leads on the question of who Republican voters believe is the most electable candidate in the general election.
The PPP survey also had good news for Carson and Fiorina, two political outsiders who have never before held elected office.
Carson, who takes 12 percent in the current survey, had been polling in the middle of the pack in Iowa, taking 5.8 percent according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls. He has the best favorability rating in the field at 69 percent positive and 10 percent negative.
Fiorina, who takes 10 percent in the new poll, has for months struggled to take more than 1 percent support in any poll. However, she was the consensus winner of Fox News’s undercard debate last Thursday and is believed by many to be primed for a breakout.
Fiorina’s favorability rating shot up from 30 percent in April to 56 percent presently.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee came in at 6 percent support each. No other candidates surpassed 3 percent support.
That’s a disappointing showing for Rubio, who was lauded by many pundits as one of the standout performers at the prime-time debate. He is among the biggest fallers in the poll, dropping from 13 percent in April to 6 percent presently.
It will take more polling over the coming days and weeks to be able to really judge what impact the debate has had on the race, of course, but so far at least it doesn’t look as though the Trump bubble will be popping any time soon, and it seems likely that we’ll be seeing a shakeup further down the race that could end up impacting who shows up in the main debate on September 16th.
Wait for Trump’s next insulting comment.
Predict that this could, should, probably will be the end.
Watch him remain number one.
Repeat.
That’s it — it must be Armageddon.
I have known a lot of Evangelicals in my life, and I can’t imagine more than a handful of the stupidest of them supporting Trump. He’s Mammon personified. He represents everything that the Bible teaches is bad. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
Trump will start losing when he starts apologizing.
@PJ: I’m afraid you’re right. He’s being supported by the segment of Americans who are tired of having to be polite to those wimmens and N-people.
It’d the id let off the lease. We’re seeing the Republican party go down the tiger’s throat.
Doug: Inconceivable!
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means..
Almost unpredictable. Except it’s totally predictable.
It’s the whole PC thing. I was out getting the mail yesterday, and I saw a couple of people and thought about caling them a bunch of $%#@&’s, but I just couldn’t. Then I realized that growing up my parents were the PC police.
Trump apparently missed those lessons and isn’t constrained having to act PC (usually just another name for acting like a civil person).
So…. Trump really is a plant. Damn! Say what you want about Bill’s taste in women and cigars, the man knows how to ratfvck his opponents.
And a tear trickles down the face of the ‘independent’ who would like to vote for a non-insane alternative to the Democratic Party, but finds the Republican Party is still as crazy as ever.
Amazing. You can say single payer is great. You can call for a tax on wealth. You can endorse and support Hillary Clinton. You can insult one of the more respected conservative journalists. You can insult a wounded veteran. You can have no fricking clue about the issues.
But as long you piss off enough liberals, there will be a section of the Right that will support you. Craziness.
I still don’t think Trump will last. Eventually, people will grow tired of him. But I will say this: I was (and still am) a Reagan conservative. I voted Republican up until 2004 and have voted Libertarian since. I can’t stand the Clintons and think what few policy ideas she has advanced are bad. And if Trump is the nominee, I might very well find myself voting for her.
Meanwhile, in the Party and Administration where sane policy actually happens, Obama just keeps succeeding:
One of these days, Doug and James are going to have to concede that the President both of them never voted for was a very successful and consequential President-despite the rabid and near treasonous opposition of their preferred party.
@DrDaveT: The disconnect between what Evangelicals may or may not believe about the Bible, how they conduct their personal lives and philosophies, and who they vote for has been growing larger ever since I left the bosom of the Baptist church where I grew up (and it was too wide for me even then!). It causes me to wonder if they really understand all of the stuff about not loving the world that they were teaching me when I was young.
In the meantime, El Rushbo, Mark Levin, and Ann (Mexicans have a cultural acceptance of child rape) Coulter seem to be leaping to Trump’s defense, and as one dittohead (that phrase really describes the cohort well) put it this morning–“the reason people are defending Trump is because they don’t like bullies.”
The fat lady isn’t even in her costume yet, let alone warming up.
@Just ‘nutha ig’rant cracker:
I never saw a clearer example of this as when Newt Gingrich, an adulterous multiple-divorcee, won the South Carolina primary in 2012. And not despite the fact that he was an adulterous multiple-divorcee, but apparently because of it. (If you recall, it was his indignant response to a debate moderator’s bringing up his less-than-exemplary marital history that led to positive coverage over his debate performance, causing his poll numbers to soar.)
The people who were going to vote for Trump before the debate, we’re not likely to have changed their minds based on what he has said. Why would anyone expect different? Anyone who is appalled by his behaviour the last few days wasn’t planning to vote for him last Wednesday either.
This is not entertaining anymore. It is just ugly, and sad that his polling total is above sero. The world needs a sane leader in the US, and even though Trump is not likely to make it at some point the people who want him now will find someone to support with the same ugly views but a better impulse control during an electioncampaign.
I don´t know. Trump reminds me of some very successful politicians in Brazil that mixtures demagoguery and some level of right wing politics. The comparisons with Berlusconi are more accurate than it looks,.
One of the real takeaways from Trump’s rise is that Democrats and liberal bloggers know more about conservatives than conservatives do. Trump is the least surprising development ever. We’ve spent years observing you people; to paraphrase Quentin Crisp, you can daydream all you want of becoming a ballet dancer, but after thirty years of running a pig farm, your style is pigs. Well, the style of conservatives is a jerk with a ridiculous comb-over daydreaming of flags and freedom while braying about things he knows about.
@Pete S: Well, I’m still laughing.
@Andre Kenji de Sousa: There is a post (now sort of old — I see it was dated 7Aug) at Slate by the reform-o-con Reihan Salam making that same point about Berlusconi. He went on to connect the anti-immigrant mood that Mr Trump is giving voice to, to UKIP and Marine le Pen’s National Front (as well as to various Danish & Swedish anti immigrant movements). I thought that was perceptive and thank you for reminding me of it.
@JohnMcC:
UKIP and National Front both come out of a populist past. Unions, solidarity, and so on. In theory, there is a positive idea to turn to in a vision of pure England/France. Trump represents nothing except greed, rage, and selfishness.
@Modulo Myself: I’ve noted that to understand the right, you have to understand the concept of a positive feedback loop. The voters, the pols, and the radio talkers all driving each other further right. The output from a positive feedback loop continues to increase until something breaks. The Republican Party may have reached the breaking point. I hope so, I’d hate to see it get any worse. One of these days, one of these clowns is going to get elected. And James, Bush is as much a clown as Trump. Trump’s lying. Bush may actually believe some of his BS.
@Modulo Myself: I’ll upvote that! But add that it seems to me that the connection between ‘nationalism’ and ‘racism’ is never too hard to find.
@JohnMcC:
I used to think that the English-vs-Irish thing was an exception to that rule. Then I ran into some old Canadian census records that had a column for “race”, where the entries consisted of blanks, ‘Irish’, or ‘Scot’…
@JohnMcC:
I agree. You can throw in anti-semitism as well. Listening to elite GOP people from Texas denounce coastal elites as if there’s no good old boy frat system at work in Houston or Dallas is basically talk about the Jews. You know, the wrong type of American who wants to control things.
Republicans seem to love former CEOs who preside over significant job cuts and poor business performance.
She was fired because the company performed poorly during her leadership, and because she made an ill-advised decision to acquire Compaq, a decision that added no value to HP-Agilent.
@gVOR08:
I’m not so sure. From the standpoint of money, the GOP hauls in a lot of it and doles out a fortune. They control a majority of the states in this country. That they can’t control the coasts or popular culture or what their children are into is just fodder to keep the machine going.
@gVOR08:
Trump is actually the future of the GOP. He has absolutely no social capital. He’s what happens when the last dollar dries up at the AEI or Heritage and there’s no glossy BS left to lend legitimacy. There might be variants: Christian Trump, Oil Field Trump, Collections Agent Trump, MRA Trump. But he’s the future.
I doubt he is the future of anything. Let’s remember the last rodeo, in which even Herman freakin’ Cain led at one point. “Anybody but
RomneyBush” – same stuff, different day.Only a tiny minority of the population actually shows up for primaries and actually forks over Free $peech, and The Party is also experiencing a bit of the downside of having the press so cowed they are afraid of declaring the world round anymore. It was only a matter of time before somebody came along and exploited that happy horse pucky to the nth degree.
IIRC Rinse Pubis used to talk about taking steps to prevent the nominating process from becoming a clown car this time. Haven’t heard much from him lately. I imagine he is out shopping for a bus.
Apparently, even Roger Ailes is in the bag. I read someplace on Yahoo yesterday that Ailes and Trump have reached some sort of detente and Trump will be appearing on some Faux News show or another where Ailes promises that Trump will be treated “more fairly.”
@Just ‘nutha ig’rant cracker:
There will be no more talk about a feud between Megyn and Donald.
Period!
The latest poll shows Trump dropping as a consequence of the debate, down to 17% nationally.
Now, who was it who predicted he’d be down to 15% by the end of this week? Oh, yeah: me.