Ben Carson just overtook Donald Trump in the polls. The Republican primary is going to stay real weird for a while.
Donald Trump, you’re fired… from leading in national polls of likely Republican primary voters!
According to a poll released Tuesday by The New York Times and CBS News, Ben Carson has taken a slight lead over the reality television personality turned Republican presidential juggernaut.
Carson, the soft-spoken retired neurosurgeon who claimed that gun regulations set the stage for the Holocaust and compared women who have abortions to slave owners, is now polling at 26%. Trump, who maintained his lead in the polls while vowing to deport Syrian refugees who come to the United States and calling Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers, dropped to 22%, which, as the Times notes, is still within the margin of sampling error.
This is still early days, and the scales may tilt back again: 70% of respondents who expressed support for a candidate also said it was too early to know whom they would ultimately back.