America
Rise and rise of Donald Trump
By
By Arun KumarWashington, Sep 10
Defying gravity and
flummoxing pundits and pollsters alike, Donald Trump has become the
first Republican presidential candidate to top 30 percent support for
the party nomination, according to a new poll.
A new CNN/ORC Poll
released Thursday found the real estate mogul pulling well away from
the rest of the crowded field of 17 Republicans, including establishment
favourite Jeb Bush, son of a former president and brother of another.
Despite
a dust up with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly during the first
presidential debate and other outlandish comments that pundits said
would spell the end of the Trump candidacy, he gained 8 points since
August to land at 32 percent support.
Trump has nearly tripled his support since just after he launched his campaign in June, according to the CNN poll.
Bush,
on the other hand, has fallen to the third place with 9 percent, down 4
points since August, behind neurosurgeon Ben Carson with 19 percent, a
rise of ten points.
Together, these two non-politicians now hold
the support of a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning
independents, and separately, both are significantly ahead of all other
competitors, the poll found.
Trump's gains come most notably
among two groups that had proven challenging for him in the early stages
of his campaign -- women and those with college degrees.
While
he gained just four points among men in the last month (from 27 percent
in August to 31 percent now), he's up 13 points among women, rising from
20 percent in August to 33 percent now.
Trump has also
catapulted ahead of the rest of the field among Republicans who back the
tea party movement, from 27 percent support in August to 41 percent
now.
Among that group in the new poll, Carson follows with 21
percent, and Ted Cruz, another candidate with an anti-Washington
message, holds third with 11 percent. No other candidate tops 5 percent
among tea partiers.
Most Republican voters (51 percent) now think
Trump is most likely to emerge as the Republican winner, well ahead of
the 19 percent who think Bush will top the party ticket and 11 percent
who think Carson will.
From the "outsider" contingent, former HP
CEO Carly Fiorina hasn't built on her post-debate rise with the new
CNN/ORC poll showing she has just three percent support.
In a
"Rolling Stone" profile, Trump took a jab at Fiorina's appearance
saying: "Look at that face!. Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine
that, the face of our next president?"
Asked for her reaction to
Trump's remarks by Kelly on Fox News Wednesday night, Fiorina said:
"Maybe, just maybe, I'm getting under his skin a little bit, because I
am climbing in the polls."
As the latest CNN/ORC poll was
conducted September 4-8, it's hard to say how Trump's comments about
Fiorina would affect his numbers, but if the past is any indication, he
would still rise and rise.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])