Trump Maintains Lead in NH; Dem Race Close
PPP's newest New Hampshire poll finds Donald Trump leading in the state by 14 points. Trump's position in the state has been steady over the last three months- we found him at 28% in mid-October, 27% in early December, and we find him at 29% this month. 5 other candidates are in double digits but pretty closely clustered and all well behind Trump- Marco Rubio at 15%, Chris Christie and John Kasich at 11%, and Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz at 10%. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina at 4%, Rand Paul at 3%, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum at 1%, and Jim Gilmore with less than 1% round out the field.
The first nationwide polls have come out and the trends of late 2015 are not only reinforced they seem set in concrete. Further my analysis that Senator Cruz has either declined or come to a halt appears to be further confirmed.
In the Huffington Post 5 Day Poll Tracker Donald Trump breaks through the 40% barrier to 41.7%
On New Years Day to which a bit of latitude could be added perhaps for enthusiasm Trump hit 48%!
In fact at one point Trump hit 58%!
Speaking of enthusiasm this put the lie to pundits meme "Trump's support is soft"
But as always it is the cumulative trend that counts and the average over time graph tells the best story
In a standard poll The latest NBC Survey Monkey Poll has Trump at 35% which is right within the cumulative average. Senator Cruz is at 18% which is about where he was at the close of the year and certainly he is showing no significant upwards momentum since his initial rise after Carson collapsed.
Cruz was on 18% on December 17 and he is on 18%
today
