Trump gains 11 points in national poll

Donald Trump is gaining on the Republican field, according to a new national poll released Friday.

The Fox News poll shows Trump with 39 percent support among GOP primary voters, an 11-point gain since last month.

His support is more than double that of his closest competitor, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who garners 18 percent support.

{mosads}Trump’s jump in the poll comes after his comments advocating a ban on Muslims entering the country, a position the poll found seven in 10 Republicans support.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) comes in third, with 11 percent support, down 3 points from November. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson follows, with 9 percent support, down from 18 percent support last month.

Nearly half of the men surveyed, 46 percent, said they were supporting Trump. The billionaire businessman also did well among Republican women, with 30 percent support.

Despite his surge among Republicans, Trump’s numbers in a hypothetical match-up against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton have sharply declined since November.

Clinton defeats the real estate magnate handily by a margin of 49 to 38 among all voters, a complete turnaround from the last poll that had the real-estate mogul beating the former first lady by 5 points.

“Trump has helped himself and Democrats over the last month,” Democratic pollster Chris Anderson told Fox. “And while the outside probability of a Trump presidency is enough to make many Democrats root against him in the primary, they can take some solace in that Trump is clearly the least electable of the leading Republican candidates.”

Rubio has a 2-point advantage over Clinton in a head-to-head contest, and Cruz ties the former secretary of State in a hypothetical general election.

The Fox News poll surveyed 1,013 adults in cellphone and landline interviews Dec. 16–17. The poll has a 3-point margin of error for the entire sample, and a 5 point margin for the Democratic or Republican voter samples.