Sunday Poll: Your Take on Donald Trump

PHOTO of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump at a campaign rally Friday night in Mobile, Ala. Photo courtesy of campaign via Facebook

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New York businessman Donald Trump is topping the polls among the 17 Republican candidates running for president, with a Reuters poll out Friday showing him gaining more momentum. Nearly 32 percent of Republicans surveyed online said they backed Trump, up from 24 percent a week earlier, the opinion poll by Reuters found.

The political calendar hasn’t brought Trump to Northern Virginia — yet. But his name is plastered across several businesses in the area, including the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, the Trump Winery in Charlottesville and the Trump International Hotel being built in DC.

Friday night, thousands (CNN reported 30,000; Meet the Press reported 20,000) turned out at a Mobile, Ala. football stadium to hear the reality star sound off on “Making America Great Again,” which in Trump’s words includes ending “Obamacare” and ending “birthright citizenship.” Alabama and other Southern states hold a primary March 1.

Pundits are trying to explain Trump’s appeal.

“Trump is the proverbial strongman,” David Axelrod says in a column by Maureen Dowd in The New York Times. “There’s no one more opposite to Obama. Bush had been impulsive and reckless, so voters wanted someone who was thoughtful and deliberative. Now they’ve had enough of gray and they want to go back to black and white, and that’s Trump. He knows nothing else.”

“It is no longer inconceivable that he’s the nominee,” Susan Page, Washington Bureau chief for USA Today, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“This guy has defied political gravity,” said Jon Ralston, a contributing editor to Politico magazine, on the same program.

What’s your take on Trump? Will he be on the ballot in November 2016? What is your take on why he seems to be so popular? Leave a comment in the Comments box below.