Ted Cruz Surges Within Striking Distance of Donald Trump in National Poll

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is now within striking distance of Republican front-runner Donald Trump in the race for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll revealed Sunday.

According to the new poll, Cruz is only five points behind the billionaire businessman, 22 percent to Trump's 27 percent. Cruz more than doubled his support compared to the same poll from late October, when his support was only at 10 percent.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) greets supporters during a campaign event, Dec. 4. (Getty Images/Scott Olson)

Cruz has been steadily increasing his stock in the race for the White House, overtaking fellow Republicans Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former neurosurgeon Ben Carson. The Texas senator is even leading in the early caucus state of Iowa.

In fact, a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll released last week showed that Cruz is now leading all other Republican candidates by 10 points in the state.

Indeed, Cruz has undoubtedly solidified his position in second-place ahead of Tuesday's Republican debate in Las Vegas. With his newfound position in the race, Cruz will find himself standing closer to center-stage than he has all debate season. CNN announced Sunday that Cruz and Trump will be standing side-by-side.

Still, the first-term senator has some work to do. According to the Real Clear Politics national polling average, Cruz is trailing Trump by 13 points. However, despite trailing, Cruz has doubled his national support average over the last five weeks.

The NBC/WSJ survey of 400 Republican voters was conducted between Dec. 6-9. It had a margin of error of +/- 4.9 percentage points.

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