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Ted Cruz Won’t Stay On Top For Long

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  • For the first time of his candidacy, Ted Cruz is on the top of a national poll.
  • According to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Ted Cruz beat out his main rival, Donald Trump for the very first time.
  • Other national polls still have Trump with a commanding lead, both nationally and in upcoming primary states.
  • In the NBC/WSJ poll, Rubio came in second followed by Kasich, Carson, and finally, Bush who failed to score even 5%.

Ted Cruz has eclipsed Donald Trump in a national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll of Republican primary voters out Wednesday, marking a significant reversal from recent weeks of surveys.

Cruz is the first choice of 28 percent of Republican primary voters surveyed between Sunday and Tuesday, in the first national poll conducted entirely following the most recent debate in South Carolina. Trump fell seven points from the last NBC/WSJ poll, from 33 percent in mid-January to 26 percent in the latest results. Though he trails Cruz by 2 points, well within the margin of error, Wednesday's poll is the first time Trump has not come out on top since October, during Ben Carson's brief and ill-fated surge.

Other polls conducted and released in recent days, both nationwide and in Nevada and South Carolina, have painted a much rosier picture for Trump.

A national Quinnipiac survey conducted between last Wednesday and Monday, for example, showed him with a runaway 21-point lead; a USA Today/Suffolk University national poll conducted over a similar time frame yielded suggested a 15-point advantage. In South Carolina, a Monmouth University poll released Wednesday showed Trump with a 16-point advantage over Cruz. The CNN/ORC poll of 245 likely Nevada caucus-goers out this week suggested a 26-point lead in that state.

During a rally in Spartanburg, South Carolina, on Wednesday, Cruz announced the results of the poll.
“For the first time in many months there's a new national front-runner on the Republican side,” he said. “So the sound you’re hearing is the sound of screams coming from Washington D.C. but what’s happening nationally is indicative of the stakes of this race.”

The latest numbers showing a tightening of the race on a national scale come on the same day Cruz challenged Trump to follow through with a lawsuit over what the Manhattan businessman's legal counsel characterized as a defamatory television ad.

“One of the things I look forward to most of all is deposing Donald Trump,” Cruz, a former Supreme Court law clerk and ex-solicitor general of Texas, told reporters gathered in Seneca, South Carolina on Wednesday. “And for that particular endeavor I may not use outside counsel. I may take the deposition myself. And I will say this: Whether in a deposition or in a court of law, getting Donald Trump under oath, under penalty of perjury, answering these questions? Well I'll point out, it didn't work out very well for Bill Clinton. Donald Trump does not want to be under oath answering questions about his own record.”

Trump has also threatened to sue Cruz on the basis of his birth in Canada, a point that the senator has repeatedly rejected as legitimate grounds to sue.

Following Trump, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio finished a clear third in the WSJ/NBC poll with 17 percent, followed by Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the New Hampshire runner-up, with 11 percent and Carson with 10 percent. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is the only candidate who failed to register in double digits, lagging behind at 4 percent, with 3 percent not sure of the candidate they will support.

Trump also lost out to Cruz and Rubio in a series of hypothetical questions pitting the candidates head-to-head. Matched against the Texas senator, Trump earned just 40 percent to Cruz's 56 percent. Against Rubio, Trump fared no better, at 41 percent to the Florida senator's 57 percent. He did prevail, albeit comparatively less convincingly, against Kasich (52 percent to 44 percent) and Bush (54 percent to 43 percent).

The poll was conducted Feb. 14-16, surveying 400 Republican primary voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.

Eliza Collins contributed.

By NICK GASS of Politico

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