AP Photo National poll: Cruz and Rubio surged after Iowa

Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are riding a wave of momentum after strong finishes in Iowa.

Donald Trump maintains a double-digit lead over his Republican rivals, but Rubio has experienced the largest surge, according to an NBC News/SurveyMonkey tracking poll released Tuesday.


The billionaire businessman has 35 percent support nationally among Republicans and Republican-leaning voters. Ted Cruz, who won the Iowa caucuses last week, has 20 percent support, followed by Rubio in third with 17 percent support. Ben Carson is at 7 percent, and the rest of the field is at 3 percent or less.

While Trump still leads by 15 percentage points, his support has dropped in the past week as Rubio has risen 5 points. The remainder of the field has been relatively stagnant.

But Republicans and Republican-leaning voters are increasingly seeing Cruz and Rubio as threats to take the nomination away from Trump, who has held commanding leads over his rivals nationally for months. A 42 percent plurality say Trump will win the nomination — a massive 20 percent fall since last week that comes amid double-digit gains for Cruz and Rubio. About three in 10 say they believe will Cruz will win the nomination, and 18 percent say they see Rubio coming out on top. Both are 10 percentage-point upticks since last week.

Hillary Clinton narrowly escaped Iowa with a win over Bernie Sanders last week, but she still holds a 12-point advantage over the Vermont senator nationally among Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters, 51 percent to 39 percent.

Despite Sanders’ expected victory in New Hampshire — he holds a double-digit lead in an average of state polls — 71 percent still say Clinton will win the nomination, while 27 percent say Sanders will get the nod. Those numbers represent a modest 1 percentage-point fall for Clinton and a 2-point bump for Sanders.

The survey of 10,707 adults — 9,484 of which who say they’re registered to vote — was conducted online Feb. 1-7.