Cruz extends Iowa lead among 2016 US Republican hopefuls

Texas US Senator Ted Cruz has solidified his lead among Republican presidential contenders in the politically crucial state of Iowa, a new poll showed.

The Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll, out late Saturday, shows the conservative Cruz with 31 percent support, 10 points ahead of bombastic billionaire Donald Trump, who has 21 percent.

Trump, who has a solid lead in national polls among Republicans, quickly tweeted about another survey.

"New CNN Iowa poll --- Trump 33, Cruz 20. Everyone else way down! Don't trust Des Moines Register poll- biased towards Trump!" he wrote on Twitter, apparently intending to say the Iowa paper was biased against him.

CNN said those were the figures from a CNN/ORC poll in Iowa released last Monday.

Jennifer Jackson of the Des Moines Register said in a video on the paper's website: "It's Cruz-mentum. Ted Cruz is crushing it in Iowa."
The poll follows a December 7 Monmouth University survey showing Cruz for the first time leading the field among voters who intend to take part in the February 1 Iowa caucuses, the first real measure of voter support in the 2016 presidential campaign.

As recently as October, Cruz, 44, had just 10 percent support in a Monmouth poll.

Trump has complained that the Des Moines Register is biased against him ever since the newspaper's editorial board called him to drop out of the race in July.

Third in the Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll is retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson with 13 percent, followed by Florida Senator Marco Rubio with 10 percent.

Republican voters seemed to have cooled on Carson -- who was leading in Iowa polls in October -- likely because of his embarrassing ignorance of foreign affairs.

The telephone poll of 400 Republican voters was taken Monday through Thursday, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percent.

The poll was taken as Trump called on Monday for barring Muslims from entering the United States.

Onetime presumed frontrunner Jeb Bush -- son of one president and brother to another -- has a measly six percent support, while all the other candidates have less than three percent support.
Source: AFP