Donald Trump is increasing his lead over his opponents with support from 49 percent of Republicans, a new poll released Monday morning shows.
The
CNN/ORC International poll released the day before Super Tuesday has Trump with a commanding 33-point lead over Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz only one point behind Rubio at 15 percent. Ben Carson is polling at 10 percent and Ohio Gov. John Kasich is at 6 perent.
Support for Trump has increased 8 points since the same poll was conducted in January and more than doubled since he sat at 24 percent in September.
Monday’s poll shows Trump has energized a large chunk of voters, as nearly 8 in 10 say they are enthusiastic about voting this year. Of non-Trump supporters, only 39 percent say they are more enthusiastic than in previous elections.
He also appears to have locked up a significant chunk of the vote, as 78 percent of his supports say they’re definitely voting for him, somewhat validating his claim that
not even murder could slow down the Trump train. By comparison, only 57 percent of people supporting other GOP candidates say they’re definitely going with their preferred candidate.
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Fifty-one percent of those polled said Trump would be most effective at solving the country’s problems while 48 percent said he’d best be able to handle the role of commander-in-chief. Cruz came in second in both areas, at 17 percent each.
The
Real Clear Politics national polling average has Trump 13 points ahead of Cruz and 16.5 points ahead of Rubio.
All of this points to an increased likelihood that Trump is cruising to the GOP nomination and even Kasich agrees as he predicted the billionaire will sweep every state come Tuesday.
“I think Trump’s probably going to win all of them,”
Kasich told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday. “But you keep holding your own, and we have our campaign plan. Everybody has to do it the way they want to do it.”
The CNN/ORC International poll was conducted among 427 Republican and Republican-leaning voters and has a margin of error of +/- 5 percentage points.
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