WBUR released a new poll of the Republican presidential field this morning. The results mirror other recent polling of the GOP race: Donald Trump and Ben Carson bunched at the top, the rest of the field far below.
The poll has Trump with the support of 22 percent of likely primary voters and Carson at 18 percent. Carly Fiorina comes in third place with 11 percent, then Jeb Bush and John Kasich tied at 9 percent. No other candidate rises above 5 percent.
A couple of quick observations: As in other recent New Hampshire polls, the WBUR results show both Fiorina and Kasich garnering a greater share of support here than in national surveys. In part, this may be a result of ideological and policy differences, with (for instance) Kasich's relatively moderate stances on immigration and education policy aligning better with New Hampshire voters than with Republicans nationally.
Those higher levels of Granite State support may also reflect the fact that Kasich and Fiorina have been two of the most dogged retail campaigners in the state in recent weeks. Both have logged a lot of miles in New Hampshire this summer, and they tend to pack their visits with multiple campaign stops each day.
Also, the WBUR results confirm the larger national trend of GOP voters favoring non-politicians at this stage in the presidential race. The three candidates who have never served in public office (real estate developer Trump, neurosurgeon Carson, and businesswoman Fiorina) fill the top three slots in this poll. In fact, that trio corners the support of more than half of the WBUR survey's respondents. One or more of those candidates may fade to the back of the pack as Primary Day approaches this winter. But the underlying anti-establishment ardor among the GOP electorate doesn't seem likely to cool any time soon.
WBUR will release a poll of the Democratic presidential field in New Hampshire later today.
