Ben Carson has taken a narrow lead over Donald Trump in the latest national poll. In a New York Times/CBS News poll released on Tuesday, Carson has 26 percent support from Republican voters, while Trump has 22 percent. After these two, the next most popular candidate is Marco Rubio, who trails far behind with only 8 percent support.
How has Carson managed to overtake Trump? As mentioned in a previous post about a CNN poll that put Carson at 22 percent and Trump at 27 percent, Carson’s lead coincides with recent statements on guns and the Holocaust. Carson’s campaigning in Iowa has also paid off so far. He’s now the favorite to win the Iowa Caucus by double digits, which is promising indeed for Camp Carson.
The poll also measured how firm each candidates’ supporters were in their choices. Trump led the way with 55 percent of his voters pledging firm support, while 80 percent of Carson’s supporters said that it was too soon for them to make up their minds for good. In addition, the gap between the two candidates is within the poll’s margin of sampling error.
We’ll see whether this pattern holds after the latest Republican presidential debate, which airs Wednesday at 8 pm on CNBC.