UPDATE: Jan. 21, 2016

Donald Trump is surging ahead in the Republican polls according to a three day Florida survey following the latest republican debate on Jan. 14.

FAU’s Business and Economics Polling Initiative says the latest numbers puts Trump with 47.6 percent of the vote.

“At this point, Donald Trump is simply crushing the opposition in the Florida Republican primary,” Kevin Wagner, a political science professor and a member of the initiative, said in a news release.

Far behind Trump is Ted Cruz with 16.3 percent, Marco Rubio at 11.1 percent, and Jeb Bush at 9.5 percent. Ben Carson dropped from the third  to the fifth spot, coming in with just 3.3 percent.

For the Democrats, Hillary Clinton is still favored in Florida, polling at 62.2 percent, to Bernie Sanders 25.9 percent. Clinton’s lead also puts her ahead of Trump if they were battling it out head to head.

“Clinton continues to hold a solid lead on the Democratic side in Florida,” Monica Escaleras, director of the BEPI said in a news release. “She’s also performing much better against all the GOP frontrunners, including Trump.”

The next republican Debate is Jan. 28, and the next Democratic debate is Jan. 25.

Gregory Cox is the managing editor of the University Press. If you would like to contact him regarding this or other articles, email him at [email protected], or follow him on Twitter.

The majority of Florida Republicans like what the bombastic billionaire is boasting about on social media and through his campaign.

Donald Trump is currently in the lead for Republican primaries in Florida, according to a survey made by FAU’s Business and Economics Polling Initiative.

“People realize we need someone to sort out all the chaos our current president has created and hopefully reverse it,” Trevor Perry, Class of 2018 Business Economics major, said.“Trump is so Anti-Obama that people are clinging to his campaign tightly.”

Trump is leading by 36 percent, with his closest competitor Marco Rubio at 18 percent. The remaining candidates in the top five for the Republican party are Ben Carson with 15 percent, Ted Cruz at 10 percent and Jeb Bush with 8.9 percent.

For the Democratic party, the survey showed Hillary Clinton in the lead with 65.5 percent, and Bernie Sanders trailing at 22.4 percent.

The survey was conducted from November 15th to 16th, with 297 likely voters registered for the Democratic Primary and 355 likely voters registered for the Republican Primary.

When compared to the General Election Sample surveying 829 registered voters with a +/-3.3 percent margin of error, the BEPI survey had a margin of error of +/-5.6 percent for the Democratic Primary and +/-5.2 percent the for Republican Primary.

While Trump is in the lead for the Republican primaries, the BEPI polls show that Trump has an unfavorable impression rating of 51 percent for both Democratic and Republican voters. With Republican voters alone, his favorable impression rating is 63 percent.

“The poll looks pretty accurate although I don’t’ know who likes Jeb Bush that much to have him in third,” Perry said.

Senior Psychology and Sociology major, Mario Sobrino, thinks the numbers behind the poll say otherwise.

He said while the polls are randomized, conducting the surveys through phones rather than online skews results toward an older demographic.

The polls are done through an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. According the FAU BEPI site, the IVR system eliminates interviewer bias and also allows survey organizations to ask sensitive questions that might make a responder uncomfortable.

Sobrino said the survey seems to be missing the numbers for the intended sample size versus actual number of participants.

“It would be great to see a contrasting poll using FAU students and other universities throughout Florida, which could research how the polls would significantly vary if our generation actually went out and voted,” he said.

BEPI’s previous September poll was featured  on MSNBC. The video segment with the poll, as well as other current polls conducted by the College of Business can be found here.