According to a poll conducted by Boston-based NPR station WBUR, a few hours before the second Republican presidential primary debate, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson trails businessman Donald Trump in the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary, 18 percent to 22 percent.
"This is a much closer race than we've seen over the last few months in pretty much any state, but it's similar to a couple polls that have come out in just the last few days, and a couple from Iowa in the last few weeks, that have shown Ben Carson doing much better against Donald Trump than anybody has done in quite a while," said Steve Koczela, a spokesman for the TheMassINC Polling Group, which conducted the sampling for WBUR, reports The Hill.
Live telephone interviews were conducted between Sept. 12-14, among 404 likely voters, as part of the poll and the margin is plus-or-minus 4.9 percentage points, reports CNN.
A CBS News-New York Times poll had predicted a similar result, with Trump at 27 percent and Carson at 23 percent on Tuesday. Carson seems to have made huge inroads as just a month ago he was at six percent with Trump at 24 percent when measured by CBS and the Times, according to The Daily Mail.
The polls found that 87 percent of poll respondents and likely voters in the New Hampshire Republican primary feel it's "very important" that their chosen candidate "says what he or she truly believes."
"He's not politically correct. He says what he means and does what he means," said Trump supporter Theodore Martin over the telephone, according to WBUR.
