Two national surveys this week from Raleigh-based Public Policy Polling show Ted Cruz making a move in the race for the GOP presidential nomination – and generally favorable views among Americans for all but one Final Four team. (No, not that one.)
Recent polls of Republican voters showed Scott Walker and Jeb Bush beginning to pull away from the rest of the field – but Cruz leapt into the upper tier after officially announcing his candidacy last week. In the latest PPP survey, Walker still leads with 20 percent of the vote and Bush is still in second with 17 percent, but Cruz is only slightly behind with 16 percent – up from just 5 percent a month ago. (That gain is due mostly to a jump for Cruz among voters who identify as “very conservative”: 33 percent of those voters said they favored Cruz, up from 11 percent last month.) Walker’s 20-percent support is down from 25 percent last month.
Two other potential candidates also poll in double digits: Rand Paul and Ben Carson both earned the support of 10 percent of GOP voters (though that’s a sharp drop for Carson: he was at 18 percent a month ago). Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie and Rick Perry all trail far behind – though Rubio actually has the highest favorability rating of all the candidates, so PPP director Tom Jensen says he may be poised to make a move later this year.
See the results of the GOP survey here.
On a lighter note, PPP also surveyed Americans’ opinions of this year’s Final Four teams, Duke, Kentucky, Wisconsin and Michigan State. In all four cases, only about half of those surveyed had any opinion about the schools one way or the other – but about 30 percent of Americans say they have a positive view of each school. Where they differ is in the negative column: Kentucky turns out to be more disliked than the other three schools (25% to Duke’s 20%, MSU’s 16%, and Wisconsin’s 15%). Jensen says that’s likely a product of Kentucky being such a juggernaut in college basketball this year: everybody likes the underdog.
Tom Jensen spoke with WCHL’s Aaron Keck on Thursday.
Other results from the survey: Mike Krzyzewski and Tom Izzo are the two most popular Final Four coaches; Facebook is the only social media outlet that more Americans like than dislike; Congress’s approval rating is still only 11 percent; Americans have a slightly more positive attitude toward millionaires than toward billionaires; and Americans generally favor making Puerto Rico the 51st state (by a 42-34 margin, with Democrats strongly in favor and Republicans slightly opposed).
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