Presidential polling
Trump leads first national 2016 poll by 17 points
New year, same big lead for Donald Trump. The NBC News/Survey Monkey poll, which came out Tuesday, reveals that Trump continues to lead the Republican presidential field by a wide margin in 2016, with 35 percent to second-place Ted Cruz's 18 percent. In third is Marco Rubio with 13 percent, followed by Ben Carson with 9 percent, Jeb Bush with 6 percent, Chris Christie with 4 percent, and Carly Fiorina with 3 percent.
The poll, the first of 2016, also found that the real estate magnate's supporters are very loyal. Over half — 51 percent — of Trump supporters said they would "absolutely" vote for him, while 33 percent said there was a "large chance" they would. Only 36 percent of Cruz supporters say they'd "absolutely" vote for him and just 26 percent of Rubio voters said the same.
The poll, which surveyed 3,181 Republican or Republican-leaning registered voters, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.