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After Months on Top, Trump Drops to Second Place in New National Poll

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows Trump falling behind Ted Cruz, but it's still unclear if this is the end of Trump or a momentary blip.
Photo by Erik S. Lesser/EPA

Donald Trump's lead is slipping, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll published on Wednesday. The survey, in which Senator Ted Cruz took the top slot, is the first to show Trump falling out of first place since last October.

The poll of national Republicans showed Trump with 26 percent support to Cruz's 28 percent. It is the first poll conducted since last Saturday's presidential debate in which Trump mocked former president George W. Bush and was frequently booed by the audience.

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But there are reasons to be skeptical about this poll. For one thing, the two-point-margin between Trump and Cruz is well within the poll's 4.9 percent margin of error; in other words Trump could easily still hold a slight lead.

Related: Donald Trump Is Proving He Doesn't Need A 'Lane' of Support in South Carolina

This poll is also a definite outlier. Recent polling has often shown Trump with a double-digit lead nationally, and NBC's own polling last month showed him ahead by 13 points. Last Saturday's debate could explain the drop, and this could be the beginning of a trend. But this isn't the first time that political prognosticators have predicted "the end of Trump," and more it will take more polling to confirm a real shift.

As NBC's Republican pollster Bill McInturff put it: "When you see a number this different, it means you might be right on top of a shift in the campaign. What you don't know yet is if the change is going to take place or if it is a momentary 'pause' before the numbers snap back into place."

Wednesday's poll also showed Senator Marco Rubio in third place with 17 percent support, while Ohio Governor John Kasich, who came in second in last week's New Hampshire primary, took fourth with 11 percent of the vote, and Dr. Ben Carson earned 10 percent support.

The poll is bad news for former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who took in just 4 percent and trailed the rest of the field.

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