Trump Dominates on Immigration, Leadership

While Democrats ratchet up the Republicans-hate-immigrants rhetoric, the polls continue to show that immigration is a major reason Donald Trump leads his GOP rivals.

A new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that on immigration and leadership, Trump dominates the Republican field. On immigration, 39% of Republicans consider Trump the strongest (Rubio comes in a distant second at 15%), while almost half, 47%, of Republicans view Trump as the strongest leader (the next closest is Jeb Bush with 12%). He’s also clearly the favorite at this point, with 43% now giving him the best chance to win the nomination.

Overall, support for Trump remains at around a third of Republicans and Republican-leading voters (32%), while his fellow outsider candidate Ben Carson sits at second place with 22%. Both of those standings have remained relatively flat over the last few weeks.

Trump certainly doesn’t lead in every category, including trustworthiness, something on which Carson came in the highest (21%, 33% respectively). The frontrunner also loses to Carson on personality (19/24). One interesting finding from the poll is that a large percentage of respondents say that the more they hear from Carson, the more they like him, as opposed to the number who like him less (64/18). Trump comes in about even (47/45) on the question.