NORTH DAKOTA (KXNET) — The new North Dakota Poll has just been released, and the results are quite interesting.

KX News had the chance to break the poll down with presidential candidate, and our very own governor, Doug Burgum.

In the presidential election, former President Donald Trump seems to be leaping over Doug Burgum among Republicans by a four-to-one measure, coming in at only 12% in the North Dakota Poll. But Burgum sees these results with an optimistic lens.

“I think we’re in third place in North Dakota, and if we can get to third place in Iowa, that’s going to shock the nation. There’s three tickets out of Iowa heading to New Hampshire and the key at this point is to outperform expectations. The one thing again, none of the national polls matter at all right now. There’s not a national primary. The primary is occurring in early states, specifically the caucus in Iowa and the primary in New Hampshire. Those are the ones that they should take a look at. So people that look at these polls and say it’s over, I just say, ‘hey, well, maybe they know who’s gonna win the Super Bowl too and we should just cancel the rest of the NFL season,'” said Burgum.

What are your thoughts on the negative comments pushing you to back away from the race and come back to your sole duties as governor?

“They said you need 70,000 donors. We have 90,000 donors. So we crossed all those hurdles. The voters get to decide who moves forward. We know that when we’re on the ground in Iowa, New Hampshire, there are a lot of voters there that are upset about the RNC trying to artificially narrow the field before the first primary even occurs. That’s the point of the primaries is to narrow the field, not some artificial backroom stuff before the voters actually get to have a say,” said Burgum.

Now shifting to the topic of abortion, the poll finds that voters and our state lawmakers are far apart on the issue.

North Dakota law currently bans abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy, even in cases of rape and incest, and also makes it a felony for doctors to perform abortions after the first six weeks.

The poll shows the state’s opposition to the law by a 48% to 44% margin.

Why did you sign a six-week abortion law — when women, independents, and democrats in North Dakota don’t support it? Did you do it just to get support for your race as president?

“Well, of course not. At the time that I signed that, I hadn’t even announced, wasn’t even thinking about it. As I’ve said, I’ve said from the first day that I ran, I would not sign a federal abortion ban. This is something that needs to be left to the states,” said Burgum.

And if he doesn’t make the next Republican Party presidential debate, he says he’s not worried at all.

“Well, we’re going to keep charging ahead, and having someone who’s had people working for them in over a hundred countries, I just had customers in over 140 countries. That’s super valuable right now in terms of understanding that. And if those were the criteria, I’d be the only guy standing on the stage. And so again, this debate criteria is a bunch of goofy stuff about who’s the most popular, not who’s the most competent. So that next debate, half as many people watch the third debate as the first debate. Americans are tired of the infighting. I don’t know if anybody’s gonna watch the next debate,” said Burgum.

The next RNC debate will take place on Wednesday, December 6 from 7-9 p.m. Central Time in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. And the trend continues for Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate, as he will be skipping this debate as well.