First time candidate Jeff Hurd has a strong lead in the Republican primary to replace Lauren Boebert in the 3rd Congressional District, according to an independent poll.

Hurd of Grand Junction has a 34% approval rating — a comfortable lead against the five other candidates seeking the GOP nomination.

Here’s the breakdown of how voters are planning to cast their ballots that are hitting mailboxes this week.

The poll was conducted by co/efficient this week using a survey of more than 1,100 Republicans and unaffiliated likely voters.

Colorado Politics reported on the results, but did not reveal who commissioned the independent poll.

“The big headline out of this dataset is you have Hurd, who’s well-liked and significantly better known than the challengers, and then you kind of have the long tail of the rest,” Ryan Munce, co/efficient’s president and co-founder, told Colorado Politics.

The pollster says the undecided voters haven’t landed yet because none of the candidates are dropping money bombs on the campaign to boost name identification.

“The undecideds will skew toward folks with higher name ID,” Munce said. “They’ll all pick up a handful of that 52%, with the lion’s share going almost certainly to Jeff (Hurd).”

The poll also reveals Donald Trump’s popularity numbers are strong despite his recent conviction by a progressive Manhattan jury of caving in to blackmail from porn star Stormy Daniels.

Trump’s favorability ranking was 77% compared to 16% of the voters with an unfavorable view.

PeakNation™ will recall that state Republican Party Chairman Dave Williams decreed that the party should endorse Hanks for the seat, who lives outside the 3rd Congressional District in Cañon City.

Interestingly, Hanks’ favorability of 17% was on par with Trump’s unfavorability numbers..

Trump has not endorsed a candidate yet in this race.

The most important issues identified by the poll are: