Today, World magazine reports that Marco Rubio’s lead over Ted Cruz increased in their survey of evangelical leaders.
Nearly half of the respondents chose Rubio as their first choice.
The other new development was some new support for Donald Trump (5%).
As the mainstream media focuses on the feud between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, this sampling of evangelicals seems somewhat split between Rubio and Cruz, with support perhaps moving toward Rubio.
While I know a few of the participants, I can only guess that World’s group is light on Teavangelicals (Tea Party oriented Christians). That group appears to be split between Trump and Cruz.
Another way to sort out the muddle is the Christian nation concept. In a Yahoo News article last week, Jon Ward suggested that Cruz supporters are much more likely to say America is a Christian nation than are Rubio supporters.
Another observation about the divide between Cruz and Rubio is that Cruz supporters really seem to think Rubio is a moderate or worse. The lone comment thus far at the World article illustrates:
NYorker
Really?! This is discouraging, depressing to see that some 82 “influential evangelicals” are so unconservative as to choose Rubio. They need to look at some facts. If Rubio is the Republican’s choice, there won’t be much difference between him and the democrat candidate, and not much point in voting. Cruz is obviously the most conservative candidate and these “influential candidates” should be supporting him!