Poll: Trump tied for first in race for GOP nod

Real estate mogul Donald Trump is tied for first in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, according to a new poll of Republicans.

Nineteen percent of Republicans named Trump, who is flirting with a run for the party's presidential nomination, as their top choice for the nomination, according to a CNN/Opinion Research poll released Tuesday. Another 13 percent said Trump was their second choice for a nominee.

That level of support is enough to for Trump to tie former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R).

Trump's surge still serves as one of the most interesting — and most surprising — developments in the fledgling race for the Republican nomination next year. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll last week pegged him as tied for second place, reflecting a growth in support no doubt served by his high level of media saturation and professed suspicion that President Obama might not have been born in the U.S.

Trump scored 10 percent in last month's CNN poll, meaning he effectively doubled his support over the course of a month.

Fifty-six percent of Republicans in the CNN poll said they would like to see Trump seek the nomination, a less encouraging figure than for Huckabee or former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R). Seventy-two percent of Republicans said they want to see Huckabee run, while 66 percent said the same of Romney.

The most curious numbers in the poll reflect drops in support for Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich over the past month. Eleven percent of Republicans said they want to see Romney win the nomination, down from 18 percent last month. (Romney formally entered the race on Monday.) Gingrich, meanwhile, scored support from 11 percent of Republicans, down from 14 percent last month.

The poll, conducted April 9-10, has a 5 percent margin of error for the Republican sample.

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