Cruz now leads among the conservative groups that once backed Carson and leads among men. Only among women does Cruz not lead; there, Rubio has an advantage.

How much has Cruz benefited from Carson's slump? Here's how the vote among evangelicals changed since October. Cruz picked up nearly all of what Carson lost, with Rubio getting the rest. Trump didn't move.

This is not a good poll for Trump, for a few reasons. The first is that point above: He doesn't seem to have picked up much of Carson's support. But, second, there's the new sample Monmouth is using. Thirty percent of the people surveyed this time are folks who say they will caucus with the Republicans in February, while the rest have actually voted in Republican primaries. Those 30 percent are presumably less likely to actually go out and participate in the caucus -- and they're much more likely to back Trump.

Among regular Republican primary voters, though, Trump is in fourth place.

As The Post's Monkey Cage noted earlier Monday, this is part of Trump's strategy: Turn out less-frequent voters in order to give a big push to victory. That's possible, given Trump's celebrity and unorthodox campaign to date. That strategy is not a new one, though, and often is to electoral politics what land invasions of Russia have been to geopolitics -- a plan that leads to humiliating defeat.

If the election were tomorrow, though, the dynamics of this race would be dramatically different than what they are now because there would have been lots of ads and field work identifying voters and so on. Anyway, Cruz is in good shape as it stands.