Although Donald Trump has maintained a significant lead over the other 15 Republican contenders running in the 2016 presidential election, a new poll showed retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson is hot on his trail in New Hampshire.

According to WBUR's first poll of the race, 22 percent of likely voters in New Hampshire said they would vote for the real estate mogul. However, Carson came in a close second with 18 percent.

Last week, a poll showed Trump and Carson were tied in Iowa and that both candidates garnered almost half of the Iowa Republican vote. Another national poll revealed that the doctor was by far the strongest contender to Trump and the only candidate with a higher image rating than the reality television star.

"This is a much closer race than we've seen over the last few months in pretty much any state, but it's similar to a couple polls that have come out just in the last few days, and a couple in Iowa from the last few weeks, that have shown Ben Carson doing much better against Donald Trump than anybody has done in quite a while," said Steve Koczela of The MassINC Polling Group, which conducted the survey for WBUR.

The WBUR survey is also reflective of Republican voters across the nation who are tired of career politicians and would rather elect someone who's worked outside of Washington. That explains why Carly Fiorina -- who like Trump and Carson has worked in the private sector as the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard -- rounded out the top three candidates with 11 percent .

Meanwhile, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Ohio Gov. John Kasich are tied for fourth place with 9 percent. The other elected officials in the race -- Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker and Mike Huckabee -- all received anywhere between 5 and 1 percent of support in the poll.

The poll shows that just 24 percent of respondents called experience in other elected office a "very important consideration," compared to 83 percent who said bringing "real change to Washington" is important.

The survey also shows that 94 percent of Trump supporters said it's "very important" their candidate "says what he or she truly believes," rather than being politically correct.