Post-Debate Poll Shows Fiorina Surging

Post-Debate Poll Shows Fiorina Surging

This is not an internet poll, but a scientific sampling of Republicans who watched the debate.

In response to "who won the debate?", Fiorina was a runaway victor.

The net positive scores ("who won" percentage minus "who lost" percentage) look like this:

Fiorina +29
Rubio +14
Trump +4
Carson +3
Cruz +2
Christie 0
Walker -4
Bush -5
Huckabee -6
Kasich -8
Paul -30

In the category of "do you now have a more or less favorable opinion of them?", again subtracting the negatives from the positives, Fiorina led with a +65, followed by Rubio with a +60 and (surprise) Christie with a +41. Carson pulled a respectable +25. Most of the others had small positives or negatives, but Rand Paul again pulled a disastrous number (-43). Paul was so far in the basement he couldn't even see the stairs. The second worst score was only -3!

Fiorina's performance was so strong that she pulled even with Trump on the main question, "If the election for President were held today, which GOP candidate would you vote for?" They pulled 22% each, followed by Rubio (15%) and Carson (12%). Nobody else pulled more than 6%, which means that Bush dropped nearly half of his support, since he polled 11% in the previous version of the same poll (September 3-4). Note that of the four main contenders, only one, Rubio, is a politician! The other three are outsiders: two business execs and a surgeon.

In summary, Fiorina emerged as a new star and Rubio remained a contender. Rand Paul obviously took a bad beating. While Jeb Bush's numbers were not as bad as Paul's, he failed perhaps just as badly because he can't rise above mediocrity and continues to stagnate, or even to recede a bit, in the second tier.