Donald Trump took the lead by a very healthy margin in a just released poll. Did his comments about John McCain help or hurt?
A new poll shows Donald Trump in the number one spot among Republican presidential candidates. The brash billionaire now holds a significant 11-point lead over number-two contender Scott Walker. Coming in third place is Jeb Bush.
Trump walks away with almost one-quarter of Republican voters, at 24 percent of the total. Scott Walker gets 13 percent – impressive for someone just entering the race a week ago. Jeb Bush takes third place with 12 percent, and Mike Huckabee gets 8 percent, putting him in fourth place.
Marco Rubio is in fifth place with seven percent, and Rand Paul in sixth, with just six percent.
The poll, according to ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl who minutes ago just tweeted initial results, was taken Thursday through Sunday. He adds this interesting twist, suggesting that Trump saying that John McCain is “not a war hero,” before immediately switching to calling him a war hero only “because he was captured,” may have hurt him a bit. Trump had added, “I like people who weren’t captured.”
Karl also shared this fascinating tidbit.
In a race to the White House between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, Clinton would win today, 50-44.
In that same Bush-Clinton matchup, if Donald Trump drops out of the GOP field and runs as an Independent, he would get jut 20 percent of the vote, Jeb Bush would get 30 percent, and Hillary Clinton would twin the presidency with 46 percent.
Trump’s first-place spot, and the wide margin voters are currently giving him, proves that his anti-immigrant, racist, and jingoistic speech is not only not a turn-off for the GOP electorate, it’s a turn on.
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Image by Michael Vadon via Flickr and a CC license