Following her outstanding performance in the CNN GOP debate, Carly Fiorina has overtaken Ben Carson for second place in the GOP field. According to a CNN poll released today, both Trump and Ben Carson have lost some support, while Carly has surged from 3% early this month to 15%.
Carly Fiorina shot into second place in the Republican presidential field on the heels of another strong debate performance, and Donald Trump has lost some support, a new national CNN/ORC poll shows.
The survey, conducted in the three days after 23 million people tuned in to Wednesday night’s GOP debate on CNN, shows that Trump is still the party’s front-runner with 24% support. That, though, is an 8 percentage point decrease from earlier in the month when a similar poll had him at 32%.
Fiorina ranks second with 15% support — up from 3% in early September. She’s just ahead of Ben Carson’s 14%, though Carson’s support has also declined from 19% in the previous poll.
Driving Trump’s drop and Fiorina’s rise: a debate in which 31% of Republicans who watched said Trump was the loser, and 52% identified Fiorina as the winner.
Another candidate whose numbers have risen since the debate is Marco Rubio.
But one established politician has seen his standing rise after flashing foreign policy chops on the debate stage. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida — identified as Wednesday’s winner by 14% of Republicans, putting him second behind Fiorina — is now in fourth place with 11% support, up from 3% in a previous poll.
In fifth place is former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, at 9%. He’s followed by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 6% each, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky at 4%, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 3%, Ohio Gov. John Kasich at 2% and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania at 1%.
Scott Walker, not listed above, barely registers in the poll at all (less than one half of 1%). In the CNN pre-debate poll published on September 10th, Walker was at 5%, so this is a substantial fall in numbers.
Watch the CNN report:
Rasmussen released polls on Friday that were taken the night of the debate and the night after that asked likely Republican voters whom they thought likely to win the GOP nomination. One Rasmussen poll question focused on Trump and found that the number of people who believed Trump would win the nomination is down for the third straight week:
Republicans lowered Donald Trump’s chances for the GOP presidential nomination for the second week in a row in Rasmussen Reports’ latest Trump Change survey.Our latest national telephone survey finds that 58% of Likely Republican Voters still think Trump is likely to be the party’s nominee next year, but that’s down from 62% a week ago and a high of 66% the week before that. The new survey includes 23% who say Trump is Very Likely to be the nominee, also trending down from a peak of 29% two weeks ago.
As with today’s CNN poll, the Rasmussen poll shows a boost for Fiorina:
Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO who turned in a strong performance at Wednesday night’s debate, is now seen as the likely nominee by 41% of Republican voters, up from 16% in early May when she joined the race. But the new numbers include just nine percent (9%) who say Fiorina is Very Likely to capture the nomination.
NBC conducted an online survey that produced similar results with Carly gaining ground, Trump losing ground but still leading, and Walker losing ground. The news is better here for Walker, however, because NBC has him at 3%.
Debates alone rarely move poll numbers in big ways, and Trump continues to lead the crowded field with 29 percent of Republican and independent voters who lean Republican saying they would cast their vote for him. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina remain on an upward trajectory, now filling in the second and third spots. Jeb Bush is holding steady at 8%, about the same level of support he’s seen since April in NBC News/SurveyMonkey polling. During that same period, Scott Walker has seen his support shrink from 12% to just 3% in our latest poll.
The results of both the CNN and NBC polls are devastating to Scott Walker. But maybe he can recover. Trump seems to be slowly losing ground, while it seems Carly is fast becoming the next big thing. Her campaign is certainly adept at responding to criticism, so she may have some staying power. What seems very clear is that Republican voters are not interested in Jeb!, Chris Christie, or John Kasich.
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