Poll: Trump now easily beating Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Scott Walker head to head nationally

So says PPP, the same outfit responsible for that poll a few weeks back showing Trump losing head-to-head match-ups against Rubio and Walker in North Carolina. Either NC is an outlier or the mood has changed nationally because Republicans across America now prefer him to either of those candidates — and not narrowly either. He leads Rubio by eight when voters are forced to choose between them and Walker by 14. As for Jeb Bush, gadzooks:

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Jeb’s got another month to turn things around before the donor class heads for the lifeboats, I think. There is one candidate tested who still tops Trump head to head: That’d be Ben Carson, the race’s nice-guy outsider, who leads Trump by six, 49/43. How come? Quite possibly because of evangelical support. Evangelicals prefer Trump to Bush, Rubio, and even Scott Walker by comfortable margins. Against Carson, though, Trump trails 49/41 among that group versus 48/44 among non-evangelicals. That’s a bad sign for Trumpmania in Iowa if Carson has legs.

Here’s an … interesting poll result.

Our new poll finds that Trump is benefiting from a GOP electorate that thinks Barack Obama is a Muslim and was born in another country, and that immigrant children should be deported. 66% of Trump’s supporters believe that Obama is a Muslim to just 12% that grant he’s a Christian. 61% think Obama was not born in the United States to only 21% who accept that he was. And 63% want to amend the Constitution to eliminate birthright citizenship, to only 20% who want to keep things the way they are.

Trump’s beliefs represent the consensus among the GOP electorate. 51% overall want to eliminate birthright citizenship. 54% think President Obama is a Muslim. And only 29% grant that President Obama was born in the United States. That’s less than the 40% who think Canadian born Ted Cruz was born in the United States.

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Among Republicans who believe Obama was born in the U.S., Trump leads the GOP field with a comparatively modest 21 percent. Among those who don’t believe Obama was born here, he leads with 39 percent. Head to head among the group that believes Obama was born here, he trails all five candidates he’s tested against — Bush, Carson, Fiorina, Rubio, and Walker. Among the group that believes Obama wasn’t born here, he utterly demolishes all five, with Carson trailing by 16 points and the rest trailing by 30 points or more. You get similar results when you divide the primary electorate by who thinks Obama is a Christian and who thinks he’s a Muslim. Trump leads the field among the first group with 24 percent but leads among the second with 35 percent. The head-to-head polling is predictable too, with Trump trailing badly to Bush, Carson, Fiorina, and Rubio among the “Obama is a Christian” group but winning handily among the “Obama is a Muslim” crowd. (He leads Scott Walker among both groups.) You wanted populism, you got it.

As for Trump’s appeal among different wings of the party, it’s true that he’s leading among tea partiers and non-tea-partiers alike but his strength is much greater among the first group than the second here. Among TPers, he’s the first choice of 42 percent, far more than anyone else in the field; among non-TPers, he leads with 25 percent, 10 points ahead of Carson. In head-to-head match-ups TPers prefer him to all of the five other candidates, and only Carson even makes it close. Scott Walker, the next strongest Trump challenger in this category, trails him among tea partiers by 19 points.

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But never mind all that. What you really want is the “Trump vs. Fox News and Megyn Kelly” polling. Here you go.

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Tea partiers prefer Trump handily to Kelly but they’re evenly divided between Trump and Fox News generally. In fact, Fox has an astounding 86/4 favorable rating among tea partiers versus 62/19 for the rest of the party. Even Kelly is at 48/27 within the group, a rating most politicians would accept happily. Interestingly, although Fox News’s favorability is much higher among those who say Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. than those who say he is, Kelly’s favorability runs the other way, increasing among those who think Obama was born here. The same trend shows up among those who say Obama’s a Christian and those who say Obama’s a Muslim: Fox is more popular with the latter group whereas Kelly is more popular with the former. That’s in keeping with her image generally as a more middle-of-the-road anchor in Fox’s otherwise firmly right-wing line-up.

Oh, incidentally: She just finished the month of August at number one in all of cable news, O’Reilly included, in the 25-54 demo, the group that advertisers care most about. That’s only the third time she’s done that since “The Kelly File” began. What happened to the post-debate boycott?

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