Donald Trump continues to lead the GOP presidential field by a wide margin according to the latest NBC News/SurveyMonkey online poll, the first in a new round from the polling partners.

NBC and the pollster have just extended their partnership in the weekly polls through 2018--they are released every Tuesday--and the first in that new series shows Trump at 35% support among Republicans compared to 18% for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and 13% for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

When asked whether they plan to change their minds about Trump (and eventually support another candidate), half (51%) said they were sure they would not.

Trump is also leading among white evangelical voters at 33% compared to 20% for Cruz--who has been wooing that segment--and 10% for Rubio. Dr. Ben Carson was at 12% of those voters.

The poll was conducted Dec. 28-Jan. 3 among 3,700 people 18-plus. The percentages are of the Republican or "Republican-leaning" registered voter members of that sample (949). The margin of error for that Republican or "leaning" registered voters sample is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.

According to the latest NBC News/Survey Monkey online poll, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump has retaken the lead in the race among Republicans and independents leaning Republican.

Trump and Ben Carson were tied in last month's poll, but Trump is now far ahead at 28% to Carson's 18%, which ties him with Ted Cruz for second place. Marco Rubio is in third with 11%, followed by Jeb Bush at only 4% and Carly Fiorina at 3%.

Cruz leads among self-described conservatives with 40% of that vote.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton has a comfortable lead over Bernie Sanders, 51% percent among Democratic and Democratic-leaning independents vs. 33% for Sanders, who is himself a Democratic-caucusing Independent.

The poll was conducted Nov. 15-17 among 5,755 adults 18-plus and has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points.

GOP Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson are threatening to pull out of CNBC’s Oct. 28 Republican debate if as proposed the debate goes beyond two hours, according to published reports.

In a letter to CNBC Thursday, the Trump and Carson camps said neither candidate would participate in the debate if its longer than 120 minutes including commercials and does not include opening and closing statements, according to NBC News.  

CNBC had proposed that its debate would not include opening and closing statements and would run two hours plus an additional 16 minutes in commercial breaks, according to NBC.

In a statement Thursday, CNBC spokesman Brian Steel said: "Our goal is to host the most substantive debate possible. Our practice in the past has been to forego opening statements to allow more time to address the critical issues that matter most to the American people. We started a dialogue yesterday with all of the campaigns involved and we will certainly take the candidates’ views on the format into consideration as we finalize the debate structure.”

Previous Republican Presidential debates, powered mostly by Republican frontrunner Trump, have generated record ratings for Fox News and CNN.