One is an outlier, two a trend.
Donald Trump’s hegemony in the GOP presidential polls has been cracked this week in the socially conservative state of Iowa. A day after Dr. Ben Carson took an eight-point lead over Donald Trump in a Quinnipiac survey, a Bloomberg/Des Moines Register poll out on Friday has Carson up by nine percentage points over Trump.
Carson is at 28 percent support in the Hawkeye State in the new poll, while Trump is at 19 percent.
Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is next at 10 percent, the only other candidate in double digits. He’s followed by Marco Rubio at 9 percent. Jeb Bush and Rand Paul are at 5 percent. Carly Fiorina is at 4 percent.
Some other interesting tidbits from the poll:
More than two-thirds of likely GOP caucus-goers also say that on the basis of religion alone, it would be unacceptable for a Muslim to be a U.S. president— a sentiment that Carson said in a Sept. 20 appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press.
Likely Republican caucus participants, meanwhile, remain uncertain about Trump’s Christian credentials. Only about a third consider him a committed Christian, while 28 percent say he isn’t and 40 percent say they’re not sure. His favorability declined slightly, to 59 percent, and the proportion of likely Republican caucus-goers who say they would never vote for Trump also ticked up 5 points to 34 percent.
The Iowa Poll, taken Oct. 16-19, included 401 likely Republican caucus participants. On the full sample, it has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points; the margin is higher in subgroups.
