Mark Murray writes:"You're fired" isn't a message Republican primary voters and Tea Party supporters are telling real-estate mogul Donald Trump, at least not yet.
According to the latest national NBC/WSJ poll, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leads the hypothetical 2012 GOP pack with support from 21 percent of Republican primary voters -- followed by Trump and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 17 percent each, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 11 percent and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin at 10 percent.
Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is at 6 percent, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann gets 5 percent, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum receives 3 percent and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour gets 1 percent.
Strikingly, Trump -- who has received a considerable amount of attention for incorrectly stating that President Obama wasn't born in the U.S. -- finishes first among Tea Party supporters (at 20 percent), followed by Romney (17 percent), Huckabee (14 percent), Palin (12 percent) and Gingrich (9 percent). When the field is whittled down to five Republicans -- Bachmann, Barbour, Gingrich, Pawlenty and Romney -- Romney leads with 40 percent, Gingrich comes in second with 20 percent and Pawlenty is third with 12 percent.
The full NBC/WSJ poll -- which was conducted March 31 to April 4, 2011, and which has a margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points -- will be released at 6:30 pm ET.