A New Poll Says Ted Cruz Is Now Leading the Republican Race, But It’s Probably Wrong

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The big campaign news of the day is a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showing that Ted Cruz leads Donald Trump nationally, 28-26 percent. But this seems unlikely: Four new national polls have been released since yesterday, and three of them continue to show Trump with about 38 percent support compared to 17 percent for Cruz.

So what’s going on with the NBC poll? If it’s an outlier, it’s a hell of an outlier. I couldn’t even find a table extensive enough to tell me how unlikely it is to be just a sample error. One in a million, maybe? So maybe it’s a problem with NBC’s likely-voter filter? Could be. Or maybe there’s been an enormous negative response to Trump’s debate performance last Saturday? The NBC poll is the only telephone poll done entirely after the debate, so if that were the case it would show up most strongly there.

Very odd. I guess we wait and see.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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