Throw out the rulebook when it comes to Trump: Pollsters

Donald Trump’s sterling performance in polls has left polling experts flabbergasted, as he keeps widening his lead over the 2016 US Republican presidential field.

According to the latest Quinnipiac polls released on Thursday, Trump is dominating the other GOP White House candidates with 28 percent voter support.

Pollsters say they have never seen anything like it. The real state mogul’s dominance of the Republican race is forcing political experts to change their minds and question whether everything they know about winning the presidential election is wrong.

First, Trump rocketed to the top of national polls, and then took double-digit leads in the states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

In addition, the New York billionaire managed to turn his favorability rating from negative to positive in a poll during the period of one month.

Patrick Murray, the director Monmouth University’s Polling Institute, hailed Trump’s “astounding” achievement

“That defies any rule in presidential politics that I’ve ever seen,” Murray told The Hill, a Washington-based newspaper.

Murray disclosed that Trump’s favorability rose from 20 percent to 52 percent among GOP voters between the months of July and August.

“Throw out the rulebook when it comes to Trump, that’s not even in the parameters of what we see as unusual,” he added.

Trump’s dominance of the GOP race has bamboozled other Republican contenders, with many of the candidates deciding to fiercely attack him.  

But as their assaults on Trump have intensified, his level of support has also skyrocketed.

Trump is leading his nearest Republican rival by 24 percentage points in New Hampshire, and in South Carolina he is having 15-point edge.

Some political experts are still continuing to insist Trump will not win the Republican nomination, but GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who had dismissed Trump from the start, has finally changed his mind.

“This is real. I’m having trouble processing,” Luntz, who had declared after the first GOP presidential debate that Trump’s campaign was doomed.

“I want to put the Republican leadership behind this mirror and let them see. They need to wake up. They don’t realize how the grassroots have abandoned them,” he added.

Now many political scientists and pollsters, Marist’s Lee Miringoff, say Trump is weathering political storms that might sink other Republican candidates finally.

In a sharp political move on Sunday, Trump said lobbyists and special interests would not influence his 2016 campaign.

“I don’t want lobbyists, I don’t want special interests,” the billionaire businessman said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Trump added that he only accepts donations from individuals who do not expect a favor in return.

“I don’t want any strings attached,” he said. “I turned down $5 million last week from a very important lobbyist because there are total strings attached to a thing like that.”

The real estate tycoon also said that if elected he would lower tax rates for middle class Americans and give a tax hike to hedge fund managers who “pay no taxes.”

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