Wow- there has been a lot of polls recently, all showing Trump with a commanding lead.  Monmouth University  shows a whopping 41% of Republicans want Trump.   I don’t follow this stuff until recently, when an MSNBC commentator said that Trump was ahead with zero margin of error. All polls have error values,  but it doesn’t seem to be enough error to put anyone else as the top candidate.

Monmouth University poll  is based on a poll of 385 people.  It is a selected group of people  who said they  will vote or leaning to vote for Republican candidates. It was done from Dec 10- 13, so it reflects the  controversy from the most recent comments by Trump on excluding Muslims from entering the US.

The  #2 position is close. Cruz,  Rubio and Carson percentages (9- 14%) are within the polling error.   One value which  has been overlooked a bit is the “No one/ Undecided” which comes in at 8%,  beating  all other 8  candidates.  But this group has been on the decline. It was 22% in June 2015.

If the  Santorium, Graham,  Huckabee and Pataki,  (CNN first debaters) drop out,  this would leave around 8% of the Republicans having to make new choices.   We may see the undecided numbers increase.

Polls help candidates develop their campaign strategies.  Top issue in this latest poll was national security and terrorism, and the lowest priority issue was education.  Economy and jobs were in second place- and I suspect also top issues for Democrats.

Lot of dynamics are at play, and we are very early in the game.

Stay tuned,

Dave