Poll: GOP primary voters want a 'strong' candidate more than a conservative

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published 13 January 2016

Likely Republican primary voters are more attracted to Donald Trump's perceived strength than Ted Cruz's conservatism, finds a new national YouGov poll released Tuesday night.

Participants were asked to apply descriptions like "bold," "honest," and "partisan" to GOP presidential frontrunners Cruz, Trump, and Marco Rubio. Trump scored the highest on terms relating to power; Cruz typically won top marks for principle; and Rubio was mostly linked to the Washington establishment.

The same poll also saw Trump maintaining a 16-point lead over Cruz, who holds second place with 20 percent. Trump takes first even though a plurality agreed he is not a "true conservative."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.