The Democrats and the mainstream media may spare no opportunity to attack Donald Trump, particularly for his stance on US immigration, but their ire is apparently not shared by Republicans. Republican voters regard the controversial real estate billionaire as a serious contender for their party’s presidential candidate nomination, according to a new poll.
Trump remains ahead of his Republican rivals in terms of preference, according to a poll conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News, and also in expectation. 42% of Republican voters expect Trump to be the presidential candidate for the Republican Party in the 2016 election, while 43% believe he has more chance of winning than any other candidate the party has to offer.
Almost 50% of those surveyed believe the 69-year-old businessman is by far the strongest leader and 39% trust him ahead of his competitors when it comes to the contentious issue of immigration, with 29% believing that he understands the concerns of ordinary people more than other politicians. 423 Republican-leaning voters were surveyed between the 15th and 18th of this month via cell phone and landline interviews.
Trump’s closest rival in the Republican nominees is Ben Carson, with ABC News and four other polls ‒ conducted by the CNN and Opinion Research Company, the Wall Street Journal, NBC News and Monmouth University ‒ seeing Carson emerge as the billionaire’s strongest challenger. 33% of the ABC News poll respondents preferred the retired neurosurgeon to Trump.