The Republican presidential horserace could be dubbed the race of the outsiders. Donald Trump and Ben Carson are virtually tied now for the Republican nomination, while Carly Fiorina is tied for third place with Marco Rubio, the only experienced politician to receive double-digit support. The real estate mogul is the first choice of 21 percent of Republican primary voters, according to the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. That means Trump is pretty much tied with Carson, who received 20 percent support in a poll that has a margin of error of plus or minus 6.46 percentage points.
Fiorina and Rubio, meanwhile, both receive 11 percent support. That marks quite a change from the July poll, when Fiorina barely registered. And while Trump is up two points from July the average of surveys over the past few months clearly shows why that may not exactly be good news for his campaign. The Washington Post explains:
According to the glimpses of the race we’ve gotten, Trump was at 19 in July and then surged ahead. He led big. The Washington Post-ABC News poll that was completed Sept. 10 had Trump at 33 points! But recently he’s faded back into the pack. Now he’s at 21 percent, when NBC took another photo. Doing better than he was in their last photo—but not overall.
On the Democratic side, the NBC/WSJ poll shows Clinton losing ground, particularly if Vice President Joe Biden joins the race. Clinton leads Sen. Bernie Sanders by 15 percentage points—53 percent to 38 percent. That is a huge plunge from July, when Clinton led by 34 points. If Biden is added to the list of possible candidates, Clinton’s lead drops to seven percentage points with 42-percent support, compared to 35 percent for Sanders and 17 percent for Biden.
