US Senator Ted Cruz surged to a 10-point lead in a new poll released on Saturday of likely Republican caucusgoers in Iowa, a sign his campaign is gathering momentum and suggesting a long nominating fight is ahead.
Donald Trump, who continues to lead most national polls, was second in the Iowa poll, with 21 percent naming him as their first choice, compared with Cruz’s 31 percent.
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, after leading an October survey by the same pollster, commissioned by the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics, tumbled to 13 percent. US Senator Marco Rubio had 10 percent. No other candidate had double-digit support.
The survey, by one of Iowa’s most respected pollsters, comes as Trump is increasingly hoping that a win in Iowa, whose caucuses are less than eight weeks away, will be a lightning strike on his way to the nomination.
“If we win Iowa, I think we run the table,” Trump said on Friday at a rally in Des Moines.
He is far ahead in polls of the other early-voting states, but Cruz’s sudden momentum in Iowa complicates Trump’s plan.
It could set up a protracted primary between the two.
Long locked in a mutual nonaggression pact, Cruz and Trump have teetered on the brink of hostilities in recent days.
After studiously avoiding any public attacks on Trump for fear of becoming a target of his derision, Cruz privately told donors last week that Trump had questionable judgement, according to an audio recording of his remarks.
The comments came two days after Trump proposed barring Muslims from entering the US as a way to combat terrorism; Cruz said he disagreed but did not criticize Trump as others have.
In a series of Twitter posts after his “judgement” comments became public, Cruz tried to play down any rift, while Trump moved toward escalation.
Cruz wrote: “The Establishment’s only hope: Trump & me in a cage match. Sorry to disappoint — @realDonaldTrump is terrific.”
Trump struck a different tone.
“Looks like @tedcruz is getting ready to attack,” he wrote. “I am leading by so much he must. I hope so, he will fall like all others. Will be easy!”
And in a speech in Des Moines on Friday, Trump criticized Cruz’s opposition to federal support for ethanol, an important state industry, and in a more audacious attack, he questioned Cruz’s faith.
“And by the way, I do like Ted Cruz,” Trump said, “but not a lot of evangelicals come out of Cuba. It’s true. Not a lot come out.”
Cruz, whose father, Rafael Cruz, emigrated from Cuba and is a fiery evangelical pastor, has succeeded more than any other candidate in enlisting conservative Christian support in Iowa.
On Thursday, he won the endorsement of Bob Vander Plaats, a leader of the Christian right in Iowa.
Despite Trump’s repeated assertions that he is “doing really well with the evangelicals,” his attack on Cruz’s faith risks pushing away that large group of politically active voters, who in the past two Republican caucuses played a decisive role in choosing the winner, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee in 2008 and former US senator Rick Santorum in 2012.
In a poll released on Monday last week by Monmouth University, Cruz emerged as the top choice of evangelical voters, comfortably ahead of Trump and with about twice the support of Carson, who also appeals to social conservatives.
On ethanol, Trump suggested Cruz was hypocritical for opposing federal support for that fuel, a major Iowa industry, while backing tax breaks for oil companies.
“With the ethanol, really, he’s got to come a long way because he’s right now for the oil,” Trump said, echoing an ethanol group that has tried to make the issue central to the campaign. “But I understand: Oil pays him a lot of money; he’s got to be for oil, right?”
Trump on Friday also sought to undermine the credibility of the Register poll even before it appeared, singling out the newspaper, the most influential in Iowa, during a customary interlude in which he attacks the news media.
“I’ll tell you, you have one of the most dishonest right here in your backyard: The also sought Des Moines Register is the worst,” Trump said to cheers and applause.
“Some reporter named Jacobs, she is the worst,” he said, referring to the Register’s lead political reporter, Jennifer Jacobs.
The business tycoon accused the paper’s polling, which has consistently been among the most accurate in surveying Iowa voters, of bias against him.
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