Carson closes in on Trump in NH poll

Ben Carson is catching up to Donald Trump in the race for next year’s GOP presidential nomination, according to a new poll in New Hampshire.

{mosads}The WBUR survey released on Wednesday said Trump now leads the retired neurosurgeon by just 4 points in the Granite State.

Trump earns 22 percent support from likely Republican primary voters there, while Carson grabs 18 percent.

“This is a much closer race than we’ve seen over the last few months in pretty much any state, but it’s similar to a couple polls that have come out in just the last few days, and a couple from Iowa in the last few weeks, that have shown Ben Carson doing much better against Donald Trump than anybody has done in quite a while,” said Steve Koczela, a spokesman for the TheMassINC Polling Group, which conducted the sampling for WBUR.

WBUR found that former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina ranks third in the New Hampshire primary race, with 11 percent.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Ohio Gov. John Kasich round out the poll’s top five, tied at 5 percent apiece.

Wednesday’s results indicated that New Hampshire Republicans are gravitating away from political experience during this election cycle.

Eighty-seven percent of respondents said it’s “very important” their chosen candidate “says what he or she truly believes.”

Only 24 percent said it’s “very important” their candidate have “experience in [another] elected office.”

WBUR conducted its telephone survey of 404 likely GOP primary voters in New Hampshire Saturday through Monday. It has a 4.9 percent margin of error.

The new poll mirrors Trump and Carson’s standings in the race for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination across multiple national polls.

Trump ranks first with 29.8 percent while Carson takes second with 17.8 percent, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average of samplings.

Fiorina, meanwhile, places seventh out of 16 candidates with 4.3 percent nationwide.