Donald Trump is no longer the favorite Republican front-runner in his 2016 bid for the White House, and in fact is now locked in a virtual tie atop the polls with retired neurosurgeon and political neophyte Ben Carson.

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday shows Trump registering 21 percent of the vote and Carson just a point behind at 20 percent. Also in striking distance are former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at 11 percent each.

Despite his suddenly sagging numbers, both Trump and his representatives have sought to downplay his seemingly changing fortunes and even deny his clear failure to gain any momentum as reflected in a series of recent polls is real.

In terms of raw numbers, Trump is up just 2 percent from the same poll taken more than two months ago, while several other candidates have shown much larger leaps in their overall numbers. At his height, Trump's poll numbers surged to as high as 32 percent in a CNN/ORC poll earlier this month, while according to that same poll Carson's numbers were then as low as just 9 percent.

The man who has lead in almost all of the early Republican polls since primary season formally commenced has even taken to complaining that the media has failed to highlight polling averages that still show him with sizable leads over all his rivals.

"It's dishonest reporting and -- let me change it -- it's knowingly dishonest," he said. "Because the polls speak for themselves. I'm up. Check out Zogby. Check out Reuters -- the Reuters -- what do they call that? The Reuters average. Even The Huffington Post. Check all of them."

Campaign manager Corey Lewandowski added most of the other candidates would be thrilled to flaunt the level of support Trump continues to enjoy. The bombastic real estate mogul himself recently lashed out at the New York Times over its contention that he has perhaps reached his ceiling and is clearly struggling to expand his base.

"Dishonest @NYTimes reporter Jonathan Martin refused to acknowledge massive crowd surge forward during my speech in South Carolina. Liar!" Trump said this week in an Instagram post.

Meanwhile, a new Public Policy Polling poll out earlier in the week found that Trump would lose to both Carson and Rubio in the critical battleground state of Iowa if the election was held today.