New Poll: Trump Takes Biggest Lead Nationally With 41% Support

There’s good news for Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump, according to a Monmouth University poll released Monday; the GOP frontrunner gained his biggest lead nationally with 41% support.

The latest report found the billionaire businessman is widening his lead in the race for the Republican nomination, up by 13 percentage points since mid-October. Ted Cruz is in second place with 14% followed by Marco Rubio at 10%, and in third place is Ben Carson with 9%.

The other 10 candidates came in with single digits, including Jeb Bush and John Kasich with 3% and Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee and Rand Paul holding 2% each.

In another national poll from NBC/WSJ released Sunday, Trump has risen to a new high with 27%, while Cruz leaped to second place with 22%, up from 10% in late October. Ben Carson’s support meanwhile has plummeted to 11% from 29%.

However, in the early primary voting state of Iowa, Texas Senator Cruz has overtaken the Donald’s top candidate status, according to the Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll. The survey, released over the weekend, shows Cruz is number one with 31% support from Iowa GOP caucus goers, up from 21 points. Trump comes in second place with 21%, Carson with 13%, Marco Rubio with 10% and Jeb Bush with 6%.

Trump took to Twitter to deny the poll, calling it “biased”:

The Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll, which surveyed 400 likely Republican caucus goers, was conducted Dec. 7-10 by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.

In a Fox News Poll released Sunday, Senator Cruz took a small lead in the Hawkeye state over Donald Trump. Cruz garnered 28% support compared to Trump’s 26% among likely GOP Iowa caucus-goers. Rubio came in third with 13% and Carson, the Iowa front-runner back in October, placed fourth with 10%.

On Fox News Sunday, Trump called Cruz “a bit of a maniac” who would never get anything done if he were commander-in-chief. The freshman senator later responded to Trump with a cleaver tweet without engaging in a war of words:

The 14 Republican contenders will go head to head on Tuesday night for the fifth GOP presidential debate in Las Vegas, Nevada.