A new national survey from CNN/ORC is the third recent national poll of Republicans to show a significant rise in support for Jeb Bush, and the second to show a surge for Donald Trump. Unlike the NBC/Wall Street Journal survey that started Jeb’s run of good news, CNN/ORC did not report approval ratios, so it’s still unclear whether the large and frankly rather inexplicable overnight improvement in Jeb’s popularity among Republicans the earlier poll showed was an outlier, as I suspect it was.
But for what it’s worth, which is not a lot, Bush has now taken a solid lead in the RCP horse-race averages as Scott Walker and Marco Rubio–again, for reasons that are mysterious or for no reason at all–have lost some of their recent buzz (nationally, at least; a new Q-Pac survey of Iowa still shows Walker with a healthy lead).
The CNN/ORC general election trial heats differ from some recent national polls in showing Hillary Clinton still pretty much trouncing the entire Republican field; it’s sort of a consolation prize for Bush that his deficit against HRC–13%–is the lowest in the field. But do you want to see an impressive indicator of partisan polarization? CNN/ORC has HRC leading Marco Rubio–widely considered the most electable GOP candidate, 56/39. She’s leading Donald Trump 59/34. That’s not a huge difference, is it?
