Despite media speculation that Donald Trump's support might have reached "an inflection point" in the aftermath of his comments criticizing Sen. John McCain's war hero status, two recent polls conducted after Trump's controversial remarks were disseminated suggest otherwise. Rather than a drop in support, both polls show that Trump's standing has remained where it was before the heavily publicized comments: He leads the field of Republican candidates vying for their party's presidential nomination. The Morning Consult national survey of registered voters shows Trump with 22 perceny support, leading both former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush who finished second with 15 percent and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker who placed third in the survey with 12 percent. The Economist/YouGov poll also has Trump in the lead with 28 percent support, double the 14 percent support for the second-place Bush. Walker ranked third in this poll with 13 percent. These latest results reinforce the Pollster.com aggregate survey which shows Trump leading the Republican field with 22.2 percent support, 8 percent more than the second-place Bush. Walker is the only other candidate in double figures in the aggregate results, with 10.5 percent support.

Although Trump's sustained surge in the polls has apparently baffled political pundits, it is in fact a phenomenon political scientists have seen before. In their study of the 2012 Republican nominating process, political scientists John Sides and Lynn Vavreck document a pattern of discovery, scrutiny and, eventually, decline reflected in the polling related to several Republican candidates, including Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum. Each of them rocketed to the top of the Republican leaderboard with more than 20 percent support, only to see their candidacies implode after extended media scrutiny. At this point Trump's candidacy seems to be in the initial scrutiny phase. But it raises the question: Is there any reason to expect that Donald Trump will avoid his predecessors' fate?

To be sure, Trump is no ordinary candidate. His high name recognition, and personal wealth, may allow him to survive extensive media scrutiny to a greater degree than did the Republican candidates in 2012. Nonetheless, there are certainly signs suggesting he may be bumping up on his ceiling of support. In the YouGov poll, Marco Rubio was the second choice of 15 percent of those surveyed, with Scott Walker named by 12 percent of respondents. In comparison, Trump was the second choice of only 10 percent of those surveyed, just below the 11 percent who said "no preference." In the absence of the poll's crosstabs, however, it is impossible to tell which candidates' support would shift to Trump if that candidate was winnowed from the field.

Part of the difficulty in predicting the trajectory of Trump's candidacy is that his appeal seems wide-ranging across the Republican electorate, but does not seem deeply rooted in any particular ideological segment. In a recent Washington Post/ABC poll 17 percent of respondents agreed that Trump's views are too liberal, but 16 percent said they are too conservative. Another 23 percent had no opinion regarding his views. At the same time, 56 percent believe his views do not reflect the core value of the Republican Party. This uncertainty regarding what Trump stands for is in sharp contrast to Bush who polls better among moderate Republicans and to Walker who does particularly well among conservatives. This makes it hard to predict where he would draw support as the Republican field is winnowed in the coming months. By comparison, when pollsters stopped including Elizabeth Warren's name in their polls, almost all of her support appeared to gravitate to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, which accounts for much of his supposed "surge" in the polls.

In addition to the lack of an obvious base, Trump has the highest unfavorable ratings among all the Republican candidates. In the YouGov poll, Trump is viewed very unfavorably by 44 percent of those surveyed, with only 14 percent viewing him very favorably and another 20 percent viewing him somewhat favorably. This compares to the 27 percent who view Bush very unfavorably. It is true that Trump does better among those who historically have been more likely to vote; his favorability ratings increase as a function of survey respondents' age, with only 8 percent of those 18-29 viewing him favorably compared to 36 percent of those 65 years or older.

To be sure, Republicans view Trump in somewhat better terms than do voters as a whole but even among them he has high negatives. In the YouGov poll, 18 percent of Republicans describe Trump as strongly unfavorable and another 21 percent somewhat unfavorably. The Morning Consult poll reports similar results, with Trump's favorable/unfavorable ratio among Republicans at 49 percent/41 percent. Only Chris Christie among the Republican candidates, at 40 percent, had such high unfavorability ratings within his party. Bush's favorable/unfavorable ratio in the Morning Consult poll, by comparison, stands at 63 percent/27 percent.

The combination of high name recognition and high unfavorability suggests that barring some dramatic change in opinion, Trump doesn't have much room to grow his support, particularly as voters begin to scrutinize the candidates in terms of electoral viability. Note that only 10 percent of registered Republicans surveyed in the YouGov poll thought Trump would win the Republican nomination, compared to 36 percent who thought Bush would be the eventual nominee. The Washington Post survey shows that 62 percent of respondents "definitely would not vote for" Trump for president, compared to only 44 percent indicating they would not vote for Bush. This suggests that as the public's choice of whom to vote for is increasingly based on a candidate's electoral prospects, Trump's support may begin to erode.

For now, Donald Trump is riding a wave of polling support premised largely on name recognition and his ability to attract over-the- top media coverage. But what happens if Trump begins to experience the decline that characterized previous Republican front-runners? He recently hinted that he would not be averse to mounting a third-party run if he feels the Republican Party has not treated him "fairly". According to the Washington Post poll, in a three-way race between Hillary Clinton, Bush, and Trump running as an independent, The Donald would attract 20 percent of the vote – a total similar to what third-party presidential candidate Ross Perot won in 1992. However, in contrast to Perot who cut into potential support for Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush about evenly, the Washington Post poll indicates that a third-party candidacy by Trump would disproportionately hurt Jeb Bush.