The Slatest

Donald Trump Tops Third GOP Poll This Month

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Donald Trump speaks during the 2014 Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Another national poll, another pole position for Donald Trump. The once-and-future reality television star is in first place in a new Fox News survey that was released Friday. With the support of 17 percent of Republican primary voters, Trump led Scott Walker by 3 points and Jeb Bush by 4 in the survey. The poll’s margin of error, though, was plus or minus 4.5 points, so the GOP establishment can take some solace in the fact that all three men are in a statistical tie for the top spot. The full results:

  • 1.) Donald Trump, 18 percent
  • 2.) Scott Walker, 15 percent
  • 3.) Jeb Bush, 14 percent
  • 4.) Rand Paul, 8 percent
  • 5.) Marco Rubio, 7 percent
  • 6.) Ben Carson, 6 percent
  • 7t.) Ted Cruz, 4 percent
  • 7t.) Mike Huckabee, 4 percent
  • 9.) Chris Christie, 3 percent
  • 10t.) John Kasich, 2 percent
  • 10t.) Rick Santorum, 2 percent
  • 12.) Rick Perry, 1 percent

Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal, and George Pataki were all shut out.

Trump’s up 7points from where he was in the same poll taken three weeks earlier (in which he was second to Bush). His strong showing in the survey comes on the heels of a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released earlier this week that had him in first place with 17 percent support to Bush’s 14 percent, and a YouGov/Economist poll released last week that had him with a 4-point lead, 15 percent to 11 percent, on both Bush and Rand Paul. Trump’s lead in both polls was also within the surveys’ respective margins of error.

In the current RealClearPolitics polling average (which does not include the YouGov survey), Trump sits in second place with 15 percent, a half-point behind Bush and 6 full points ahead of Walker. In the Huffington Post’s rolling average, meanwhile, Trump sits in first place with 17.4 percent, 3.1 points ahead of Bush and 9.4 points ahead of Walker.

Outside of Internet comment sections, no one thinks The Donald’s lead will last. But when combined with his required (although not necessarily expected) release of his FEC financial disclosure this week, it does mean he is now pretty much a lock to make it onstage at the first GOP presidential debate, which will be hosted by Fox News in Cleveland on Aug. 6.

Read more of Slate’s coverage of the 2016 campaign.