Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has achieved a majority in a national poll for the first time since the primaries began. This comes as states in the Northeast are voting, in elections Trump is expected to win.
Trump skeptics have continually insisted that The Donald has a ceiling of 30 to 40 percent and cannot win a majority of Republicans nationwide. This may not have been entirely false — this is one poll among many, and Trump’s recent victory in New York, while impressive, may not be representative of other parts of the country. Nevertheless, as more states are likely to back The Donald vote today, this poll suggests the wind is firmly in his favor.
A new NBC News/SurveyMonkey weekly election tracking poll found Trump with 50 percent support among Republican and Republican-leaning voters. Runner-up Ted Cruz took 26 percent and John Kasich stood at 17 percent. Nevertheless, when just looking at Republicans, excluding independents who lean toward the GOP, Trump is still just below a majority — at 49 percent. He only had 43 percent last week. Support for Kasich and Cruz is down among Republicans compared to the past few weeks.
This particular poll was taken online between April 18 and April 24, surveying 10,707 adults, including 9,405 registered voters.
Five states vote today: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. According to the RealClearPolitics polling averages, he’s up 26.3 points in Connecticut, 21.0 points in Maryland, 20.2 points in Pennsylvania, and 29.3 points in Rhode Island. In the one Delaware poll included by RealClearPolitics, Trump leads by 37 points!
Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania are among the most Roman Catholic states in the country, and Trump has pretty consistently led among Catholics. In Massachusetts, the third-most Catholic state in the nation, The Donald won 53 percent of papists, who accounted for half of the vote. He also famously dominated heavily Catholic New York state. The only Catholic state which opposed Trump was Wisconsin.
Trump is well-positioned to capture a large number of delegates: winning Delaware’s winner-take-all primary, and taking most of the delegates in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Maryland, which award their delegates proportionally. Since Pennsylvania only binds 17 of its 71 delegates, Cruz has been courting the unbound delegates in that state, but Trump is likely to score all 17 bound delegates. FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has projected that The Donald will pick up 94 delegates overall.
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