Sen. Cruz closes gap with Trump in national poll

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is closing the gap with front-runner Donald Trump in the race for the GOP nomination, according to a new national poll.

The Quinnipiac University survey, released Tuesday, shows the Texas senator is trailing the billionaire businessman by only four points.

Support for Trump among registered Republican voters has remained essentially the same at 28 percent, while Cruz has shot up eight points to 24 percent since the university's last poll in late November.

The findings are a blow to Trump’s campaign after months of dominating the polls. Cruz has opened up a lead over the real estate mogul in some Iowa polls and is closing the gap nationally.

The Texas senator has “chipped away at the bedrock of Trump followers,” Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac poll, was quoted as saying by the New York Times. “This may be the first real eye-opener for the Trump people.”

Last week’s GOP presidential debate appears to have helped Sen. Cruz as 40 percent of Republicans said he was the winner, while 20 percent said Trump was the winner.

Trump has created a furor in the US and around the world by his inflammatory rhetoric on the campaign trail.

He has proposed a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims" entering the United States, following last month's mass shooting in California.

The reality TV star has also called for a database to track Muslims across the United States, and he has said that the US would have "absolutely no choice" but to close down mosques.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio stood at 12 percent in the Quinnipiac poll, a five-point drop since late November.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who was deadlocked with Trump in September, continued his downward spiral with 10 percent.

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