He is truly “Teflon Don.”
Republican frontrunner billionaire Donald Trump has jumped seven points—a remarkable hike in the polls—after the GOP debate in Cleveland, Ohio, last week and a subsequent spat with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.
The Morning Consult poll of 746 self-identified Republicans and GOP-leaning independents has Trump with a commanding lead over the entire rest of the field at 32 percent. That means he leads the next three candidates—former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Dr. Ben Carson and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker or Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)—combined. Bush, who came in second, got only 11 percent. Carson came in third with 9 percent. Walker and Rubio tied with 6 percent each.
Trump’s 32 percent means he leads Bush, Carson and Walker—or Bush, Carson and Rubio, depending on which candidate tied for fourth place one considers actually in fourth—combined. His 32 percent is tied with Bush, Carson, Rubio and Walker combined.
Trump’s 32 percent is also up seven points over last week’s Morning Consult poll, which had him at 25 percent. The poll was conducted Aug. 7 through Aug. 9—Friday through Sunday—which means most of the polling was done not just after Trump’s debate performance in which he battled Fox News anchors seemingly determined to take him out but also after Friday evening comments about Kelly.
“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever,” Trump said of Kelly during a Friday interview with CNN’s Don Lemon. Many of Trump’s competitors in the 2016 field—and Red State’s Erick Erickson, a Fox News Contributor who disinvited Trump from his weekend conference with various candidates and activists over it—took that to mean Trump was insinuating that Kelly was menstruating, but Trump later noted that he was talking about her nose.
“Trump’s support shows no evidence of slipping after he told a CNN anchor on Friday night that Kelly, one of three moderators overseeing the Fox News debate, had ‘blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever,’” Morning Consult’s Reid Wilson wrote about the poll.
What’s more, Trump’s favorability ratings in this new poll skyrocketed.
“The share of Republican primary voters who say they view Trump favorably increased since the last tracking poll, to 62 percent from 57 percent,” Wilson wrote. “But the number of registered voters who say they see Trump unfavorably remains high — 52 percent of all voters say they see him in a negative light. That makes Trump both the most popular candidate within the Republican field and the least popular candidate Republicans could nominate for next year’s general election.”
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