Many Democrats may belittle Donald Trump, but Republicans apparently take the candidacy of the real-estate mogul, and current presidential front-runner quite seriously, a new poll suggests.

Not only does the former "Apprentice" star continue to lead his GOP presidential rivals in preference, but he also does so in expectations -- a result that ABC News, which conducted the survey in collaboration with the Washington Post, dubbed "remarkable."

Forty-two percent of Republicans told pollsters that they expect Trump to be the Republican Party's presidential nominee. And in a hypothetical matchup with his six main rivals, the outspoken and often controversial candidate has the best chance to win the general election, 43 percent of GOP supporters judged.

The 69-year-old businessman is also seen as the strongest leader by nearly half of those surveyed. On immigration, 39 percent trust him more than any of his rivals, while 29 percent say he "best understands the problems of people like you."

The poll, which took place between Oct. 15 and Oct. 18, through landline and cellphone interviews and in both English and Spanish, sampled some 423 Republican-leaning voters. Its results have a margin of error of plus or minus 5.5 percentage point, ABC News detailed.

A handful of other surveys, meanwhile, confirm that another underdog, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, is slowly emerging as Trump's closest challenger, CNN reported. No fewer than four separate polls -- in addition to ABC News, but also the CNN and the Opinion Research Company, Monmouth University and the NBC News and the Wall Street Journal polls -- confirmed Trump's support as exceeding 25 percent, while Carson scored consistently around 20 percent.

In the ABC News survey, Carson outdid Trump on honesty and trustworthiness, that 33 percent favored the physician and 21 to the business mogul. Only 19 percent, meanwhile, said that Trump had the best personality and temperament to serve effectively as president, while the mellow Carson scored 24 percent in that category.

The crowded field of remaining GOP contenders, finally, will have another chance to impress -- and change some of those poll numbers -- when CNBC hosts the third Republican debate next week.