AP Photo National poll: Sanders closing the gap with Clinton

Marco Rubio is down, John Kasich is up and Donald Trump is still head and shoulders above the rest of the Republican field, according to the results of the latest national NBC News/SurveyMonkey weekly online tracking poll released Tuesday. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton's advantage over Bernie Sanders has narrowed to its smallest in the last seven weeks.

In the Republican race, Trump took 38 percent, followed by 18 percent for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, 14 percent for Rubio (a decrease of 3 points from the last survey), 8 percent for Ben Carson, 7 percent for Kasich (up 4 points from last time) and 4 percent for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.


Regardless of their preference, 56 percent of Republican voters said they expect Trump to win the Republican nomination, up from 42 percent who felt that way last week, before his blowout victory in New Hampshire. Just 22 percent feel the same way about Cruz and 10 percent about Rubio.

Trump holds the support of one in three evangelical voters (33 percent), with other candidates either losing or maintaining their level of support among that group. Among very conservative voters, Cruz holds a narrow advantage over Trump — 36 percent to 33 percent.

Among Democrats, Clinton leads Sanders 50 percent to 40 percent. Heading into South Carolina, whose Democratic voting electorate is more racially diverse than either Iowa or New Hampshire, Sanders holds a narrow 3-point advantage over Clinton (47 percent to 44 percent) among white voters.

While Sanders has drawn a significant portion of his support from the youngest voting bloc (under the age of 30), just 25 percent of millennial black voters said they are supporting the Vermont senator, compared with 64 percent who said they are backing Clinton. The reverse is true among white millennials, who support Sanders 75 percent to 22 percent.

The poll was conducted online from Feb. 8-14, surveying 11,417 registered voters nationwide. The survey's overall margin of error is plus or minus 1.1 percentage points.