Trump Jumps In Latest Poll, Wins Huge Lead Over GOP, His Highest Average Ever

Donald Trump is now more popular than ever among Republican voters.

It seems nothing Donald Trump can say or do will stop his poll numbers rising. Trump can now attack and offend every minority with impunity, tell outrageous lies, make outlandish statements, and his supporters will defend him, apparently, without reservation. 

Trump, you’ll remember, has a long history of racist comments, well before he began his run for the White House. So that he has attacked, defamed, and marginalized Hispanics, Mexicans, African-Americans, Muslims, a war hero, immigrants, Asians, women, and the disabled – only to see his numbers rise, says a lot, about GOP voters.

This week Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank penned a post titled, “Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist.”

GOP voters seem to take that as a badge of pride.

In a just-released CNN/ORC poll, Trump pulls ahead of all his Republican opponents, taking more than one-third – now 36 percent – of the GOP vote. Trump’s nearest competitor is Texas Tea Party Senator Ted Cruz, with 16 percent, a huge 12-point jump. Trump recently said he’d consider Cruz as a VP.

Lagging in third place now is Ben Carson – 14 percent, down 8 points – who at one point held the top spot over Trump.

Marco Rubio gets 12 percent, coming in fourth, gaining 4 points.

“The poll reflects Trump’s dominance over the rest of the field on the issues voters deem most important to them,” CNN explains. “He holds massive margins over other Republicans as the candidate most trusted to handle the economy (at 55%, Trump stands 46 percentage points over his nearest competitor), the federal budget (51%, up 41 points), illegal immigration (48%, up 34 points), ISIS (46%, up 31 points) and foreign policy (30%, up 13 points).”

GOP voters also see Trump as the best candidate to defeat the Democratic nominee.

RealClearPolitics says Trump’s average polling numbers now at the highest point ever.

The RealClearPolitics average puts Hillary Clinton over Trump by less than one point, and Bernie Sanders in a tie with Trump.

Some responses via Twitter:

 

 

Image by Michael Vadon via Flickr and a CC license