New National Poll Shows Marco Rubio Climbing and Jeb Bush Plummeting
— -- There's a new shift in the race to be the Republican non-outsider candidate in the 2016 presidential contest.
A new national Quinnipiac poll released this morning shows Marco Rubio has climbed 5 points after a strong debate performance to 14 percent support, his highest number in a national poll since Donald Trump entered the race. Meanwhile, Jeb Bush has sunk 6 percentage points over the last six weeks to just 4 percent support today, his lowest in any national poll so far.
The poll is the first new survey conducted entirely after the third Republican debate.
Still, Donald Trump remains at top of this new national poll with 24 percent support -- almost double the support of Rubio -- but now he's knotted up with Ben Carson, who gained 6 points since late September to hit 23 percent support.
Ted Cruz also increased his support after lashing out at the moderators during the third debate, almost doubling his support from 7 percent to 13 percent. Voters appear to have chosen Rubio and Cruz as winners after the third debate, with roughly one-third of GOP voters who watched choosing them as victors. Four in 10 Republican voters, on the other hand, chose Bush as the worst candidate in the debate.
No other candidate garnered more than three percent support, including Carly Fiorina, who fell 9 points in the last six weeks.
But the new poll, conducted from Oct. 29 to Nov. 2, shows that Carson's support may be soft. A majority of Trump supporters say they have made up their minds. This compares to almost two-thirds of Carson supporters saying they haven't locked in their votes.
