John Kasich has gained supported in a new national poll in the past week, but Donald Trump continues to dominate the GOP field, according to a new NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll released Tuesday.
Trump remains the front-runner with 45 percent of the GOP vote, followed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at 24 percent and Kasich up four points with 16 percent. Eight percent remain undecided.
The support for Trump and Cruz were unchanged, despite Marco Rubio’s exit from the 2016 race. Rubio, following a sweeping loss in his home state of Florida to Trump, has since urged his supporters to back Kasich in an effort to prevent Trump from claiming the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination.
Despite the uptick in support for Kasich, nearly 80 percent of those surveyed believe Trump will be the GOP nominee in the general election come November.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton has 52 percent support nationally among Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who was swept by Clinton in the Democratic March 15 primaries, has 41 percent, while 7 percent are undecided.
While the support for the two Democratic presidential candidates’ support is unchanged from last week, Clinton has seen a 7-point jump among those who believe she will be the Democratic nominee. Today, nearly 80 percent Clinton will represent her party in November. She leads Sanders in this category by more than 60 points.
The online poll of more than 13,000 adults was conducted March 14-20 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points among registered Republican voters and plus or minus 2.2 percent among registered Democratic voters.
