Donald Trump Has Strong Lead in New Hampshire

According the Reuter's 5-day moving polling average, Trump has increased his standing in the Republican race since the Paris terrorist attacks.

Among Republican voters, 36 percent said they now have more confidence in Trump's ability to be president while only 10 percent said they were less confident in his abilities after the Paris attacks.

"I think it is in free fall, I think, if you look over the last week and a half, two weeks", Trump told a questioner who encouraged him to analyze Carson's political fortunes.

Carson had also benefited from that sentiment.

Marco Rubio, too, called for a dramatic escalation in social-media warfare.

Trump bolsters N.H. lead: The New York Times writes that billionaire Donald Trump has bolstered his lead in New Hampshire, according to one poll, demonstrating his enduring popularity in the face of aggressive rivals. Rubio's support for a 2013 bill that would have provided a path to citizenship for millions now living in the USA illegally has been an issue in the campaign.

Trump's appearance followed one in the state on November 12 when he also repeatedly criticized Carson, who has led in polls in Iowa ahead of the first-in-the-nation caucuses on February 1.

Although Trump is the top choice of Republican primary voters, he performs the worst against Clinton in general election ballot tests.

And more than 60% said Carson was more honest and trustworthy and cares more about "people like you" when compared to Trump. After using an expletive to describe what he would do to ISIS, after throwing out more interruptive comments during the last Republican debate and after a trail of campaign comments that would have sunken any other candidate's ship, Trump remains #1!

Instead, it seems that Republican voters have found themselves drawn to Trump, who in a new ad where he proclaims I will bomb the hell out of ISIS. However, Carson (25 percent) moves above Cruz (20 percent) and Bush (16 percent). That's a reversal from an August Bloomberg poll in which just 34 percent said they could back him and 43 percent said they never would.

The initiative polled 297 likely voters in the Democratic primary and 355 for the Republican primary. It had an overall margin of error of +/- 1.9 percent.

At this point, imagining an ultimate contest between Rubio and Cruz is like wondering who, other than Apple, has the most popular smartphone.

The poll was conducted among 804 registered New Hampshire voters and has a margin of error of +/- 5.5 percentage points for Democratic voters and +/- 5 percentage points for Republican voters.

Mirroring national primary polls, Clinton and Trump also took the top marks in the Reuters/Ipsos survey when looking at just voters from their own party.