Poll: Donald Trump Still Leads the GOP Field -- NBC News

[bsteadman]

Poll: Donald Trump Still Leads the GOP Field

NBC News
John Lapinski, Hannah Hartig and Stephanie Psyllos
1/5/2016

With the presidential primaries in full swing, Donald Trump maintains his sizable lead over the rest of the Republican field. Among Republican or Republican-leaning registered voters, Trump has 35% support compared to 18% for Ted Cruz and 13% for Marco Rubio, according to results from the latest NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll for the week of December 28, 2015 through January 3, 2016. The poll was conducted online among a national sample of 3,700 adults aged 18 and over.

Trump leads among men with 39% of support, compared to 21% of men who support Cruz and 13% of men who support Rubio. Trump also leads among women with 29% support, while Cruz and Rubio have about equal support from women—13% and 14%, respectively.

Perhaps surprisingly, Trump also has the highest support among white evangelical voters—33%. Although Ben Carson did fairly well among white evangelicals (12%), the group heavily favored Trump. Cruz also did well with white evangelicals, with 2 in 10 supporting him. Rubio's support among this group was 1 in 10. Republican-leaned voters who describe their political views as "very conservative" are most likely to support Trump (35%) and Cruz (30%) with the other candidates at least 20 points behind.

A big question in the election is whether Trump supporters will change their minds. Our results show that half of Trump voters (51%) say they are absolutely certain they will vote for him. Another 3 in 10 Trump supporters say there is a large chance they will vote for him. Cruz and Rubio supporters, however, are not as certain that they will vote for their candidate. Just under half (49%) of both candidates' supporters say there is a large chance they will vote for their candidate but they are not absolutely certain.
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View the complete article, including video and images, at:

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016...-field-n490116

[bsteadman]

ROCK STAR TRUMP -- Crowd shot from Trump’s Massachusetts rally is mind-boggling

This crowd shot from Donald Trump’s Massachusetts rally is absolutely mind-boggling

The Washington Post
Chris Cillizza
1/5/2016

Excerpt:

Donald Trump went to Lowell, Mass. — a town about five miles south of the New Hampshire border — for one of his now trademark big-arena rallies on Monday night. ........

The building — named after the late Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas (D) — holds 8,000 people, and local officials were estimating that it was filled to capacity or beyond. That is a MASSIVE amount of people — especially considering that the high temperature in Lowell yesterday was 29 degrees and Trump's rally didn't start until the evening.
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I know that crowd size is an uncertain indicator in politics. After all, if crowd size at rallies was determinative, Bernie Sanders not Hillary Clinton would be the heavy favorite to be the Democratic presidential nominee. That skepticism of crowd size goes double for Trump since there are plenty of people who go to see him simply for the spectacle or to be near a celebrity, not because they have any designs on voting for him.

And yet, the willingness of so many people to wait so long in such cold temperatures simply for the chance to see Trump speak would suggest that the idea that his supporters won't be the sort of people to sit through the long caucus process of Iowa or turn out to vote in the frigid cold of New Hampshire might be misguided.
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View the complete article, including video, tweets and images, at:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...y-eye-popping/