New National Q-Poll Has Ted Cruz Four Points Behind Donald Trump

HotAir.com:

Looks like Ted Cruz has begun to peak at just the right moment. A new national poll from Quinnipiac puts the Texas Senator within four points of Donald Trump for the lead, within the margin of error for registered Republican voters. Trump trounces both Cruz and Hillary Clinton for another honor … a dubious one:

Six weeks before the Iowa Caucuses open the 2016 presidential race in earnest, Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz lead the Republican field nationally, but Trump trails either Democratic candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and 50 percent of American voters say they would be embarrassed to have Trump as president, according to a Quinnipiac University National poll released today.

Trump has 28 percent of the GOP pack, with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas at 24 percent. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida has 12 percent and Dr. Ben Carson has 10 percent, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University Poll finds. No other candidate tops 6 percent with 8 percent undecided. But 58 percent of those who name a candidate might change their mind.

This is a big move for Cruz — eight points in three weeks for the Q-poll series. It broke a three-way deadlock for second place, as both Rubio and Carson dropped in the polls, by five and six points respectively. The other somewhat significant move came from Chris Christie, who rose four points to get to 6%, and who now has passed Jeb Bush to gain fifth place overall. No one else’s support changed even close to the margin of error, and the same 8% still don’t have a candidate preference.

Cruz appears to be improving on his likability, too. He gets a 35/33 rating overall and a 34/28 among independents. It’s not as good as Marco Rubio, whose +9 at 37/28 is the best in the GOP field (and 38/24 among independents), but Cruz has had issues on likability in the past. He’s doing better than Ben Carson on this question, who has slipped to negative numbers overall, 36/38.

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