In comments, Logan suggests that perhaps the Trump surge wasn’t due to the Paris attacks, but rather Ben Carson’s collapse. It certainly does look like most of the support for Trump came from Carson:
The Pollster data isn’t as fine-grained as the Fivethirtyeight data, but it casts some doubt on the hypothesis that terror helped Trump. It is still possible, of course, that Carson lost support to Trump because frightened Republican voters decided that Trump was somehow stronger. But it is also possible that Carson crashed for other reasons and those voters went to Trump as the other anti-establishment candidate in the race.
Back to you, Logan.
Well, polls whose sampling period overlaps the Brussels attacks are starting to come out, and to my eyes they don't show obvious additional movement toward Trump, though we probably need to be a week or two in to be sure.
Posted by: Matt McIrvin | March 25, 2016 at 10:50 PM
The first national primary polls taken completely after Brussels show Trump up several more points, maybe at the expense of Kasich. But it's hard to tell, not many numbers yet.
Posted by: Matt McIrvin | March 30, 2016 at 08:11 PM