One or even two opinion polls don’t constitute a trend, and it’s fool hardy to put too much emphasis on such a small sampling. But the first live-telephone interview survey released after last week’s Republican presidential debate, the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll conducted September 17-19, will get and deserves a lot of attention. It gives Republican leaders and strategists, at least those of a traditional bent, the first reassuring news in a while: It suggests that support for the candidates who are most anti-establishment may have reached or passed its peak, while other candidates are showing signs of life. The poll of 444 voters (two-thirds of them Republicans and the rest GOP-leaning independents) put Donald Trump, the real estate tycoon, still in first place, with 24 percent. But he has slipped by 8 percentage points since the previous survey, conducted September 4-8. Retired neurologist Ben Carson, the other completely outside-the-box candidate, also lost ground, dropping 5 points, to 14 percent. Both declines fell within the poll’s margin of error of +/- 4.5 percent, but my hunch is that the shift
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