In advance of the fourth GOP debate, The Hill’s sister media outlet, NewsNation, did some thorough polling of Republican primary voters. The poll’s insights shed some fascinating — and in some ways, unexpected — light on tonight’s gathering.

Simply put, several things may not be as they seem.

Donald Trump is still leading the Republican field as expected, but by more than some polls have indicated. Although the data is nationwide and our elections are conducted state-by-state, his topline number is still impressive: 60 percent of respondents indicated that they intend to vote for Trump.

Trump does even better on the issues, with scores above 60 percent on questions regarding which candidate is best suited to deal with the issues most important to GOP primary voters. Put another way, even folks who don’t like him still like his policies.

The data point that is likely to get a good deal of attention, however, is the 29 percent of Trump supporters who say that he should be disqualified from the ballot if he is convicted of a crime.

Although noteworthy, that is not necessarily as damning as some — included all of his challengers — may hope or think. After all, even if almost one-third of his support were to evaporate, that would still leave him with 40 percent support. That’s not a majority, but with no unified non-Trump candidate, that plurality would still have him leading the field.........

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