'I'm Not Electing A Pastor In Chief' — How Iowa's Evangelicals Are Deciding

"Awaken the body of Christ that we might pull back from this abyss". This means that almost two-thirds of evangelicals now have serious reservations of one kind or another about him.

Or has Trump redefined social conservatism by returning to a harder form of backlash politics that shaped the late 1960s and early '70s? Many evangelicals in November could still cast a vote for Trump, on a "lesser of two evils" calibration.

During a telephone interview on ABC's This Week, host George Stephanopoulos asked Trump to answer Ted Cruz's charge that he was advocating for a single-payer health insurance system to replace the Affordable Care Act. As of Friday, Roe said, internal data showed that 9,131 people were deciding between Cruz and Trump, 3,185 between Cruz and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, and 2,807 between Cruz and U.S. Marco Rubio of Florida.

Here is where Cruz and Trump stand on 10 important issues. A profound fear has gripped many of its elected officials: With apologies for paraphrasing Frank Sinatra's hymn to the "New York values" Cruz has condemned, the worry is that if Trump can make it here, he can make it anywhere.

Cruz, on the other hand, is a pastor's son who is very comfortable speaking in the language of personal redemption that is the lingua franca among evangelicals. As of Friday, Trump had a roughly 6-point lead over Cruz in one polling average, a sharp reversal from just 17 days ago, when the senator held the No. 1 spot by a hair.

An unscheduled speaker at Cruz's rally was Sen.

"Ted Cruz is going to be the same today as he was yesterday, as he will be tomorrow", former Texas Gov. Rick Perry told voters at a Cruz event in Albia.

It is not just Trump's past statements that are at issue. Donald Trump has successfully gone full birther on him, Rubio attacked him for being a hypocrite on immigration, revelations about loans for Goldman Sachs and a less than stellar debate performance have combined to hit Cruz right in the poll numbers. "I will never let you down".

"He's a strongman with a will to power", Sasse said.

On Monday without making any reference to the poll, Trump boasted that evangelical Christians "really do get me", according to the Associated Press. Cruz does not call himself a libertarian (neither does Rand Paul), but his libertarian-ish streak has been obvious enough to draw the ire of foreign policy hawks and social conservative purists alike. He did note that Christians are "under siege" and should band together to exert more influence, while attending a rally at a private Christian college in Sioux Center on January 24.

"This guy passes me and I'm like, 'Man, that guy looks like Richard Dreyfuss, '" Beck said. I don't care if it costs me votes or not. "He's got a lot of momentum headed to New Hampshire, which hopefully will translate into momentum to SC and on here into Georgia", Brockway said Tuesday. That decision for many evangelicals between head and heart could very well decide who wins Iowa on Monday night after a tight race between the Texas senator and the real estate magnate. When that turnout was decreased to 130,000 - a number much closer to the Cruz campaign's expectation - Cruz and Trump were tied at 26 percent.