Poll: Trump maintains lead in Iowa; Fiorina catching fire

CEDAR RAPIDS - Donald Trump is leading the field in Iowa, but Carly Fiorina is the Republican candidate with momentum, according to Public Policy Polling's newest Iowa poll.

Trump tops the race for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination as the first choice of 19 percent of Republican primary voters, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leads Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders 52 to 25 percent in Iowa, PPP said.

But the biggest winner, according to PPP President Dean Debnam, is Fiorina, who has broken into double digits to put her in the top five in the GOP race, and her favorability ratings are up from 30 favorable/15 unfavorable percent in April to 56/15 percent.

'She was such a non-factor the last time we polled (in April) that we didn't even bother to include her in the horse race question,” Debnam said. She's the first choice of 10 percent and is the most frequent second choice of Republican voters.

Behind Trump, retired physician Ben Carson and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker are at 12 percent. Bush is at 11 percent.

Following Fiorina are Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at 9 percent, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 6 percent. The other nine candidates are clustered between 3 percent and no support.

The small growth in Trump's favorability rating from 40 favorable/40 unfavorable percent in April to 46/40 suggests to Debnam that his numbers 'could be back on the way down after peaking sometime in the last few weeks.”

However, he added, Trump 'does have the advantage with pretty much every segment of the GOP electorate” - evangelicals, men, women, voters in every age group, moderates, voters who are most concerned with having the candidate who is most conservative on the issues, and voters who are most concerned about having a candidate who can win the general election.

In the other race, Debnam said PPP polling suggests it's not that Democrats are souring on Clinton, but that Sanders is doing well. Clinton's 75/15 percent favorability rating now is similar to her 78/16 percent standing in April. Sanders's rating has increased from 40/16 in April to 61/14.

'As Democrats get to know him they're pretty much completely deciding that they like him,” Debnam said.

PPP surveyed 619 usual Republican primary voters and 567 usual Democratic primary voters from Aug. 7-9. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.9 percent for Republicans and plus or minus 4.1 percent for Democrats.

Four-fifths of participants responded by the phone, while 20 percent of respondents who did not have landlines conducted the survey over the Internet.

For full results, visit http://smgs.us/3k3g