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Unlike more moderate New Hampshire, Ted Cruz needed to do more than merely finish well in South Carolina - he needed to win. The Cruz campaign pulled out all the stops in a manic effort to secure victory. Instead, it appears he will finish a distant second or third to Donald Trump. It is a finish that has his donors reconsidering the longer term viability of a campaign that is now for the first time in weeks, said to be spending far more dollars than it is taking in. And where Marco Rubio now appears poised to receive an influx...

Donald Trump's rivals are running out of time to stop him. After Saturday's dominant performance in South Carolina, a close look at the calendar of upcoming elections suggests the New York billionaire's rivals have until mid-March to slow him down. After that, their only chance to keep Trump from representing the Republican Party in the general election may be a nasty, public fight at the GOP's national convention. The reason is delegates -- and how they're awarded in the Republican Party. While winning states generates headlines, a candidate wins the party's nomination by collecting a majority of the delegates awarded...

Since 4pm on Wednesday, over thirteen hundred participants have weighed in with their opinion on the primary races, via our exclusive online 7News poll. Here are the findings of that survey. ... WHO DO YOU INTEND TO VOTE FOR IN THE SC PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY Some eleven hundred people responded in the poll with who they intend to vote for in Saturdays Republican Primary. Some eleven hundred people responded in the poll with who they intend to vote for in Saturdays Republican Primary. The final tally gives Donald Trump a large lead of more than twenty percent ahead of his closest...

Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) echoed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) calls to wait for a new president to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia. In a statement Saturday night, Grassley said it's been standard practice over the last 80 years not to confirm a Supreme Court nominee during a presidential election year. "Given the huge divide in the country, and the fact that this President, above all others, has made no bones about his goal to use the courts to circumvent Congress and push through his own agenda, it only makes sense that...

The conservative group American Future Fund will begin airing a TV commercial in South Carolina that labels Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz as "weak" on national security, an especially damaging claim in the military-heavy state. The ad likens Cruz to Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders and President Barack Obama. According to the ad, "Ted Cruz talks tough on national security. But look at his record. Cruz voted with Bernie Sanders against defense spending," and the ad also claims "Cruz sided with Obama to weaken our ability to track terrorists." The Anti-Cruz group - run by GOP bigwig Nick Ryan, is spending...

"He said he's sorry that this happened and he wants to sit down and talk," Carson said in an interview with The Washington Post. "He wants to discuss the whole thing and clear the air." "To be determined," Carson said when asked where they may meet. "Doesn't matter." The Carson campaign has been critical of Cruz after his campaign spread false rumors during the Iowa caucus, and sent voicemails to Iowa precinct captains suggestings that Carson was dropping out of the race.

Survey produced by Prof. Joshua J. Dyck, Ph.D. Field Dates: 2/4/16-2/6/16 N=1413 New Hampshire Registered Voters (RVs) N= 516 Republican Primary Likely Voters (LVs); N= 428 Democratic Primary Likely Voters Adjusted Margin of Error: +/-2.97% for all RVs; +/-4.82% for Rep LVs; +/-5.38% for Dem LVs Margins of error have been adjust ed to include for design effects resulting from weighting and survey design features -snip- REPUBLICAN PRIMARY (N=516 LVs)Q8 If the NEW HAMPSHIRE REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY was being held today would you vote for [RANDOMIZE ORDER: candidate list below]? Q8a Do you lean more towards...[order as Q8]? [if DK/NA/REF]...

INDEPENDENCE - This was something new for Naomi Probert: Stand in front of a crowd of 500 people and tell them why she feels someone should be elected president of the United States. The married mother of adopted Haitian children ages 5 and 6 found one candidate spoke to her heart: Dr. Ben Carson. She and her family met Carson, personally, a day earlier in Manchester. The experience only reinforced her support for him. So much so, she was willing to speak on his behalf at her Republican precinct caucus Monday night at Independence High School. In fact, her kids...

Greta Van Susteren went off on the Cruz Campaign tonight over their handling of the Ben Carson Caucus scandal. On Monday Dr. Ben Carson accused the Cruz camp of foul play in the Iowa Caucuses.Carson said the Cruz camp told voters Carson was dropping out and to support Ted Cruz.Carson was right to be outraged... The Cruz camp sent out messages and made calls to all precinct captains that Dr. Carson was dropping from the race.On Thursday Greta Van Susteren reacted to the Cruz campaign scandal. Greta Van Susteren: Horrible!... This is appalling! For some reason to me, what happened...

Dr. Ben Carson, once a presidential contender leading the GOP polls, found himself swatting away rumors that he planned to drop out of the race in the heat of the Iowa caucuses Monday night.The rumor was sourced to a single CNN report about Carson's plans to travel home to Florida after the Iowa caucuses - rather than directly to New Hampshire, as is typical - and was spread by Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-TX) campaign. It sparked a full-blown scandal as Carson claimed the Cruz camp's tactics hurt his performance in the caucuses and second-place finisher Donald Trump took up Carson's...

Rich Lowry of National Review magazine is seriously taken to task by four Fox women commentators Smith, Faulkner, Colby, Camerota, and Tantaros about his undeniable bias against Trump, his lack of logic, and called out in a lie... To the three minute video link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei6f5F4zIvo

The first in a series of daily tracking polls leading up to the New Hampshire primary finds Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders holding huge leads among Granite State voters. The poll, released Monday by UMass Lowell, found Trump leading the Republican race by 26 percentage points. Sanders leads among Democrats by 31 percentage points. The poll results are consistent with other recent surveys that have found Sanders and Trump in the lead, although the UMass Lowell poll has both Trump and Sanders leading by larger margins than other recent polls. New Hampshire will hold the nation's first primary next Tuesday,...

One more day to the Iowa Caucuses - and the public is pretty sure they know what will happen. Voters aren't necessarily happy about the influence the first caucus and primary states hold. Still, many potential voters admit that what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire will be important in deciding how they will cast their ballot. In the latest national Economist/YouGov Poll, pluralities of both Republicans and Democrats think Iowa and New Hampshire have too much influence on who wins the parties' presidential nominations. Half the public isn't sure whether the Iowa-New Hampshire dominance needs to change, and partisans...

Ted Cruz started the month riding high in Iowa. Now, he just wants to get out of the state alive. The self-styled rock-ribbed conservative is under siege, battling attacks from his right and left flanks who say the Texas senator with tea party and evangelical credentials isn't who he claims to be. And as Cruz appears to be falling farther behind front-runner Donald Trump, his campaign is now looking in the rear-view mirror, concerned that Marco Rubio and the rest of the GOP field are closing in. Cruz's problems were in sharp relief at the Fox News debate in Des...

Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee says primary rival Ted Cruz cannot be trusted to be a conservative leader in the White House, accusing the Texas senator of flip-flopping on several issues. "Ted Cruz has changed his positions on ethanol, immigration, H-1B visas," Huckabee said Friday on CNN's "New Day." "He's changed it on whether marriage is a state or a federal issue. He's changed it on whether he's going to be a real champion for religious liberty or whether that's going to be way down the road and it's not important," he added. The former Arkansas governor said voters shouldn't...

Just three days before the Iowa caucuses, longtime Republican Gov. Terry Branstad ripped into Ted Cruz - mocking him for his Thursday night debate performance and asserting that his prospects in the state are dimming. "Ted Cruz was ahead in Iowa, but as people have figured out his stance on issues that are important to the economy of the state" he's lost support, Branstad said during a Friday morning taping of CSPAN's "Newsmakers," pointing specifically to Cruz's opposition to ethanol subsidies - an issue of central importance to Iowans. "He was ahead on polls, but now he's dropped below Trump."...

The Republican poll leader revels in Cruz getting 'pummeled' at the Fox debate. Iowa is shaping up to be a two-man GOP race. And one suddenly has a limp. Donald Trump on Friday wasted little time kicking a bruised Ted Cruz, his closest rival in Monday's Iowa caucuses who took the brunt of the Republican field's attacks after the real estate mogul bowed out of the prior night's Fox debate. Appearing before a town hall here, the Republican poll leader crowed that Cruz "got pummeled" on stage at the Iowa Events Center while he raised $6 million for veterans groups...

Senators Rand Paul and Marco Rubio joined forces Thursday night to accuse their colleague, Ted Cruz, of being willing to "do or say anything" out of political expediency. "This is the lie Ted's campaign is built on, and Rand touched upon it," Rubio said during the debate. "That he is the most conservative guy and everybody else is a RINO. The truth is, Ted, throughout this campaign, you've been willing to do or say anything in order to get votes." Rubio and Paul argued that Cruz has been inconsistent in his approach to immigration reform. Cruz, who put forth an...

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll in Iowa finds Donald Trump has pulled ahead of Ted Cruz with a seven point lead among likely Iowa GOP caucus-goers, 32% to 25%. Key finding: "The poll also shows Trump in a close race with Cruz among likely voters who are white Evangelical Christians, 31% to 28%. The two candidates have been battling over the influential bloc of voters in the state, with each touting endorsements from Evangelical heavyweights in recent days." In the Democratic race, Hillary Clinton remains just three points in front of Bernie Sanders, 48% to 45%.

Gov. Terry Branstad (R-Iowa) said in an interview released Tuesday that Donald Trump is changing the way presidential candidates seek the White House. "We've never had anybody with quite the character of Donald Trump," he said on USA Today's "Capital Download." "He has certainly rewritten the rulebook," Branstad told host Susan Page. "He has tremendous media presence. I think it’s a tribute to the interest people have in restoring America's greatness. They are very unhappy with the way things are going in Washington, D.C." Branstad argued that the surge of Iowans supporting Trump recalls the rise of then-Sen. Barack Obama...