The latest Fox poll has Trump gaining a ton of ground in Iowa over the past two weeks since he went nuclear birther on Cruz. The Washington Post beraks it down:
And to think nobody bothered to go nuclear negative on Trump until now and it's an outside group with limited buy. So weird.
But that isn't the whole story. The voting pool in that poll has changed too:
Two weeks ago, the percentage of respondents saying they would "definitely" go out and caucus on Feb. 1 was 59 percent. In this new poll, that dropped to 54 percent, meaning a 10-point swing toward those who would say they will "probably" go to the caucus. Two weeks ago, Trump trailed Cruz by six points among those who would probably vote. Now he leads with that group by 15 — more than his overall lead against Cruz.
But that's risky for him. As we've noted, self-reporting of whether people will get to the polls is not always accurate and tends to depend on past voting behavior more than anything. In the new Fox poll, Trump gets 34 percent of Iowans, but 43 percent of those who will be going to caucus for the first time. Perhaps they will. But people who haven't voted before are a lot less likely to vote than people who vote all the time, for perhaps obvious reasons.
By all accounts Trump does not have the kind of ground game in place that will ensure all these first time caucus goers actually go. But who knows, maybe they are so excited by the idea of deporting Mexicans and banning Muslims that they'll make the effort. Or maybe they'll just get drunk instead.
But it is interesting that Trump just cannot be too negative for these Republicans. I think he's right. He could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and he'd go up in the polls. He'd skyrocket if the person he shot was black or brown. Extra credit for a Muslim.
And his other rivals are helping. Get a load of this from one of the Rubio PACs:
