US presidential hopeful Donald Trump has widened his lead over US presidential hopeful Ted Cruz in Iowa, according to a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll on Saturday that showed the billionaire gaining momentum ahead of today’s caucuses.
The survey found that 28 percent of likely Republican caucusgoers supported Trump, while 23 percent backed Cruz. Trailing the two leading candidates were Senator Marco Rubio of Florida at 15 percent and Ben Carson at 10 percent.
The poll, considered the most authoritative survey of Iowa caucusgoers, had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
The results came as the US Republican presidential hopefuls crisscrossed Iowa in hopes of turning out supporters and persuading undecided voters to caucus for them.
On the Democratic side, US presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton and US presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders of Vermont battled for the lead, with Clinton getting the support of 45 percent of likely caucusgoers to Sanders’ 42 percent. Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor, trailed with 3 percent.
Of Democrats who were planning to caucus, 30 percent said they could still be persuaded, while 45 percent of Republicans remained open to changing their minds.
Backed by evangelical Christians and social conservatives, Cruz, of Texas, surged to the top of the Iowa polls last month only to see his momentum dampened under sustained attacks from Trump. A poll from the same group mid-last month showed Cruz with a three-point lead.
For months the candidates were publicly friendly toward each other, but Trump recently raised questions about the eligibility of the Canadian-born Cruz to run for US president and assailed his lack of popularity in the Senate. Cruz largely sought to remain above the fray, but urged Iowans not to be lured by a candidate without a conservative record who would “burn” them if chosen as the Republican nominee.
Some political analysts suggested that Trump might have blunted his momentum by skipping the Republican debate last week. However, Saturday’s results suggested his gamble paid off.
Most voters said they did not care that Trump missed the debate. However, a majority said they were bothered by Trump’s previous pro-choice views and his use of eminent domain as a businessman.
Voters were also perturbed by Cruz’s failure to disclose loans he took from big banks during his term in the Senate, but they did not seem to care about his Canadian roots.
Among the lower-tier Republican candidates, the poll showed Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky with 5 percent support, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey with 3 percent and Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee and Governor John Kasich of Ohio each with 2 percent.
Christie, Bush and Kasich have focused their efforts on winning New Hampshire, visiting Iowa only sporadically.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
RSS