electability and being an effective and prepared leader

The latest poll out of Iowa has Ted Cruz still ahead, this time besting Donald Trump by nine points.

A CBS News 2016 Battleground Tracker poll, which was released yesterday, shows 40 percent of Iowa Republicans supporting the Texas senator, while 31 percent support the billionaire businessman.

Marco Rubio continued to poll in third place, at 12 percent, while Ben Carson has 6 percent.

Every other Republican has fewer than 2 percent of support, including Jeb Bush, who's at 2 percent.

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Ted Cruz is once again the leader of the pack in Iowa as the most recent CBS News poll shows him nine points ahead of Donald Trump

Ted Cruz is No. 1 in Iowa currently, but Donald Trump isn't too far behind. Marco Rubio is the only other candidate to receive double-digits

This is the fifth poll out of Iowa where Cruz has landed in the top spot, a trend that started in early December.

Trump had been pretty consistently in first place in Iowa, and has been since July, except for two weeks in October in which Carson lead the pack.

But Carson's star in the state, which holds the first set of caucuses, fell fairly quickly, as questions cropped up regarding his untested record.

Cruz, however, can play it both ways – yes, he's a United States senator, so he has government experience, but he's also been branded part of the 'outsider' pack, thanks, in part, to some of the shenanigans he's pulled since being in Washington.

Of those polled by CBS, 63 percent said that Cruz was electable, versus just 35 percent who found Carson to be electable.

Cruz beat Trump and Rubio in this metric as well, with Trump polling at 41 percent and Rubio polling at 50 percent.

A majority of Iowa voters labeled Cruz as 'prepared' and 'effective' as well. And he, again, got higher percentages than the other three leading candidates.

Three out of four Republican voters in Iowa said they supported what Donald Trump was saying on the campaign trail and were glad he was bringing these issues up

Sixty-one percent described Cruz as prepared, compared to 48 percent for Rubio, and then 29 percent for Trump and 22 percent for Carson.

Trump performs a lot better when voters were asked if he would be an effective leader. He receives 42 percent support for this statement, while Cruz received the highest marks, at 55 percent.

Rubio received 36 percent support for being an effective leader, while Carson, once again, came in last for this metric at 25 percent.

And even though Trump is no longer in first place in Iowa, three-in-four Republican voters supported what he had to say.

When GOP voters were asked how they felt about what Trump was saying on the campaign trail, 74 percent said they were 'glad someone says them, they need to be said and discussed.'

On the flip side, 21 percent said they were 'unhappy someone says them, they don't belong in a presidential campaign.'

And when Democratic voters were added to the picture and both parties were asked about Trump's plan to ban non-American Muslims from coming into the United States there was a split, with 50 percent of Iowa voters saying they supported Trump's plan and 50 percent saying they were against it.

Interestingly, when the top four Republican candidate in Iowa are tested against Hillary Clinton in the general election Rubio and Carson fare better than Trump and Cruz.

Rubio, according to Public Policy Polling's new national poll, comes out strongest against Clinton.

He has a teenie tiny lead over the Democratic frontrunner with 44 percent of voters saying they'd support the Florida senator, while 43 percent said they'd vote for the former secretary of state.

Clinton and Carson are tied at 45 percent.

Clinton receives 46 percent to 43 percent when matched up against both Cruz and Trump.

She wins the most convincingly over Bush with 44 percent support to Bush's 39 percent.

According to PPP, this was the fourth straight poll where Bush has performed the worst against Clinton in head-to-head match-ups.

If Cruz or any other Republican became the party's nominee and Trump decided to wage a third-party bid for the White House, he'd basically destroy the GOP's chances of getting it back from the Democrats.

With Cruz as the nominee, Trump would receive 23 percent of the vote, Cruz would get 26 percent of the vote and Clinton would win with 42 percent – that's a switch from a three point lead to a 16 point lead against the Republican senator.

Against Rubio, Trump would take 24 percent of the vote, Rubio would get 27 percent of the vote and Clinton would win with 41 percent of the vote.