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Trump Change: More GOP Voters Than Ever Say He’s The Man

Bang! More Republicans than ever think Donald Trump will be their party’s presidential nominee next year.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 74% of Likely Republican Voters believe Trump is likely to end up as the GOP nominee, with 34% who say it is Very Likely. The overall finding is a 16-point jump from a week ago and up eight points from Trump’s previous high among Republicans of 66% in early September. This is also the highest number to date who see a Trump nomination as Very Likely.

Just 23% of GOP voters say “The Donald” is unlikely to capture the Republican nomination, but that includes only six percent (6%) who consider it Not At All Likely. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

When Trump first announced his candidacy in mid-June, just 27% of Republicans felt his nomination was likely.

Among all likely voters, 57% say Trump is likely to be the Republican presidential nominee, with 22% who view it as Very Likely. Both these findings are also record highs since Rasmussen Reports began the weekly Trump Change survey in mid-August. Thirty-nine percent (39%) still say Trump is not likely to win the nomination, with 16% who say it is Not At All Likely.

Trump’s jump coincides with a good week-and-a-half by Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton who triumphed in her party’s first presidential race debate last week and got a big boost from Vice President Joe Biden’s decision not to challenge her. She also emerged unscathed from a lengthy appearance yesterday before the congressional committee investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya in 2012.

In a hypothetical matchup between the two, Trump and Clinton are in a near tie, but a sizable 22% prefer some other candidate.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters was conducted on October 20-21, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

As long as the GOP race remains competitive, Rasmussen Reports will continue tracking Trump’s surprisingly successful early run for the White House in a weekly Friday feature we’re calling Trump Change.

Most Democrats (53%) still say Trump is not likely to be the GOP nominee, but 57% of voters not affiliated with either major party disagree.

Sixty percent (60%) of whites think the billionaire developer is the likely Republican standard-bearer, a view shared by only 40% of blacks and 52% of other minority voters.

Conservatives believe much more strongly than moderates and liberals that Trump is the likely winner of the GOP presidential contest.

Entrepreneurs and those who work in the private sector are a lot more convinced than government workers that Trump will go all the way.

Trump made news this week with reports that he is continuing to finance his own campaign unlike his Republican rivals who are relying on campaign donations and that he agrees with British Prime Minister David Cameron’s plan to close mosques that harbor Islamic radicals.

Eighty percent (80%) of all voters view the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion as Very Important, but half (49%) also feel that the government does not focus enough on the domestic terror threat of radical Islam.

The last thing a struggling Jeb Bush needs to do is have his campaign focus on defending an unpopular president of recent memory, even if is his brother.

Prior to yesterday’s congressional hearing, most voters said Clinton has not been telling the truth about what happened in Benghazi when she was secretary of State, according to a new Full Measure-Rasmussen Reports national survey.

Clinton has said the president’s plan to exempt up to five million illegal immigrants from deportation doesn’t go far enough, but most voters still oppose Obama’s plan. Trump says he will crack down strongly on illegal immigration and deport those who are here illegally.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters was conducted on October 20-21, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Rasmussen Reports is a media company specializing in the collection, publication and distribution of public opinion information.

We conduct public opinion polls on a variety of topics to inform our audience on events in the news and other topics of interest. To ensure editorial control and independence, we pay for the polls ourselves and generate revenue through the sale of subscriptions, sponsorships, and advertising. Nightly polling on politics, business and lifestyle topics provides the content to update the Rasmussen Reports web site many times each day. If it's in the news, it's in our polls. Additionally, the data drives a daily update newsletter and various media outlets across the country.

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