Donald Trump is favored by 24 percent Idahoans for the GOP presidential nomination, and by 28 percent of Idaho Republicans, a new Idaho Politics Weekly poll shows.
Nationally, some polls now show Trump creeping above 30 percent as the top pick among the large Republican Party presidential field.
The new Idaho survey was conducted by Dan Jones & Associates, taken from Aug. 20-31 of 508 adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.35 percent.
Retired brain surgeon Ben Carson gets 11 percent support in the new Idaho poll, while former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush gets 8 percent support.
The others fall off from there.
Meanwhile, Jones finds among the Democratic field Hillary Clinton gets 16 percent support among all Idahoans, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders has 17 percent support, Vice President Joe Biden (yet undeclared) has 16 percent support, 11 percent mentioned someone else and 34 percent said they don’t know which Democrat they prefer.
Among those who said they are Democrats: Clinton has 44 percent support, Sanders 24 percent, Biden 16 percent, and 11 percent didn’t know.
Among Idaho Republicans, Trump gets 28 percent, Carson 15 percent, Bush 7 percent, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is at 7 percent, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul has 5 percent, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio is at 6 percent, and 17 percent don’t know.
Idaho is a red state – and come November 2016 the state will give its Electoral College votes to whoever the GOP nominee is.
With that in mind, Jones finds that if the final match-up were Trump the Republican and Clinton the Democrat, 52 percent of Idahoans would vote for Trump, 29 percent Clinton and 18 percent don’t know which they would vote for.
Finally, Jones wanted to find out if Idahoans would support Trump if he decided to jump from the Republican Party and run a third party, or independent, campaign for president.
Now, after the poll was finished Trump announced just Thursday that he would sign a pledge promising to support the ultimate GOP nominee and not run an outside campaign.
But that was not known when Jones was in the field polling. In fact, at the first GOP presidential debate over a month ago Trump specifically said he would not take such a GOP loyalty oath.
Anyway, Jones finds that among all Idahoans 30 percent said they would support Trump if he ran an independent presidential campaign, 62 percent said no, with 8 percent not knowing.
Among Idaho Republicans, 36 percent – or more than one-third – said they would support Trump if he ran a third party, or independent, campaign, while 55 percent said they wouldn’t support Trump if he did that, and 9 percent of Republicans said they didn’t know.
Thus, it appears Trump has considerable support among Idaho Republicans – at least in these early days of the 2016 presidential campaign.
