Evangelical leaders are showing the strongest support for Marco Rubio out of the presidential canddiates, according to the results of an October survey conducted by the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) released on Thursday.
26 percent of evangelical leaders that are a part of the NAE's board of directors picked Rubio as their preferred candidate, while Ben Carson and John Kasich each received 12 percent of the votes. Jeb Bush received 9 percent of the votes.
21 percent of participants said they were undecided, and 7 percent said they do not prefer any of the candidates.
Other candidates such as Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Ted Cruz received what the NAE called an "insignificant" amount of votes without disclosing the actual numbers.
"Rubio represents a new generation of conservative leadership to many," Leith Anderson, the president of the NAE, said in a statement. "But about the same number of evangelical leaders aren't seeing a strong candidate for them in the mix, and frontrunners didn't fare well in our poll."
Unlike the NAE poll results, Donald Trump and Ben Carson have been the frontrunners in the mainstream media polls. Trump had been in first place for a period -- a point he boasted often -- but Carson has been leading the polls in recent weeks.
These positive NAE poll results for Rubio come as many are currently lauding his performance on Wednesday night's GOP debate hosted by CNBC.
"There were plenty of strong moments for almost all of the candiates not named Jeb Bush, but what made Rubio's moments so useful for him was that they combined three things: They were well-timed, they shored up his weaknesses, and they came as his rising poll numbers and the vulnerabilities in his rivals' polling are creating a moment for him," wrote John Dickerson, a political columnist for Slate magazine.
"[Rubio] was the only candidate who made the most of every opportunity given him and also calmly created several additional opportunities on his own," wrote Andrew Cline, former editorial page editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader whose column was published in USA Today.
However, as a first-term Florida senator and the youngest presidential candidate in the GOP, Rubio may still be seen with skepticism from many Republicans for his lack of experience, as Washington Post's Karen Tumulty wrote. Rubio also still lags behind Carson and Trump in the mainstream polls for GOP candidates.
The recent poll is one of the NAE's monthly polls among its board members. The NAE is an association that consists of dozens of evangelical denominations, including Assemblies of God, Christian Reforemd Church in North America, Church of the Nazarene, Evangelical Free Church of America, North American Baptist Conference, The Salvation Army, and the Wesleyan Church, among others.
