Ben Carson keeps making provocative statements - and conservatives are loving it
He's topped Trump in a slew of recent early Iowa polls, and a New York Times/CBS survey released Tuesday found Carson surging ahead of the real-estate tycoon ahead of the third GOP presidential debate Wednesday night.
Despite their statuses as political outsiders, Trump and Carson have little in common electorally.
Polling data have shown that Carson is attracting evangelical and more religious voters, while Trump's support is demographically broader and a bit firmer. Carson's soft-spoken demeanor also contrasts with Trump's bombast.
But, like Trump, Carson has a penchant for making provocative statements that appears to be benefiting him in the polls.
Two years ago, right as Carson was becoming a nationally known political figure, he opined that the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama's signature health law, was the "worst thing that has happened in the nation since slavery."
On the campaign trail so far this year, he provoked outcry from Democrats for saying he could not support a Muslim president. Earlier this month, he turned heads for saying Adolf Hitler's regime may have been stopped if the German public had been armed.
While Democrats and others on the left decried the statements, early polling data have shown that conservatives overwhelmingly approve of some of his most controversial comments - and that they are helping him gain traction with the Republican base.
According to a recent Bloomberg/Des Moines Register poll of likely Iowa Republican voters, 80% said that they agreed with his comparison of Obamacare to slavery. 77% said they found his comments on Nazi Germany to be "attractive." And the majority of likely Republican voters said they would not vote for a Muslim president.