Poll: Cruz Grabs ‘Commanding’ Lead In Iowa

Sen. Ted Cruz has leapt up to 31 percent support in Iowa, 10 points ahead of Donald Trump, according to a new poll by the Des Moines Register.

The poll, released Sunday, shows Trump at 21 percent among likely caucus voters, Ben Carson at 13 percent and Sen. Marco Rubio at only 10 percent.

In October, Cruz was at only 10 percent. He’s tripled his ratings according to the newspaper’s data.

“Big shakeup,” J. Ann Selzer, a pollster for The Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll told the newspaper. “This is a sudden move into a commanding position for Cruz.”

The caucus will be held Feb. 20.

Cruz’s campaign is touting its big jump — and giving part of the credit to a sophisticated combination of grass-roots support and modern voter-tracking technology.

The combination was shown to the Washington Post, which reported the Iowa outreach to individual Iowa voters is:

“part of a months-long effort by the Cruz campaign to profile and target potential supporters, an approach that campaign officials believe has helped propel the Texas senator to the top tier in many states, including Iowa, where he is now in first place, according to two recent polls. It’s also a multimillion-dollar bet that such efforts still matter in an age of pop-culture personalities and social media messaging.”

The new Iowa poll, described here, also shows Ben Carson’s support has been halved from 28 percent in October. Trump’s support failed to grow, but only shrank a little from its peak at 23 percent in August.