Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina’s poll numbers are starting to reflect her strong debate performances, as the former Hewlett-Packard CEO has jumped to second place in the latest CNN national poll.
At the same time, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker continues to plummet in the polls.
Real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump still leads the field with 24 percent, but Fiorina is second with 15 percent, in the first national poll taken since Wednesday’s GOP primary debate.
While Fiorina still lags behind Trump, the polls show the front-runner is starting to lag. He is down 8 percentage points from a similar poll earlier this month, according to a CNN report.
Fiorina, who sits second in the Washington Examiner‘s presidential power rankings, got high marks for her support for defunding Planned Parenthood and her attacks on Trump.
The former Hewlett-Packard CEO isn’t the only one surging. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is in fourth place with 11 percent, up from 3 percent in a previous poll, CNN said.
Rubio has had two steady performances in both GOP primary debates, and could vault past former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as the establishment favorite for the nomination.
Bush is in fifth place at 9 percent and neurosurgeon Ben Carson moves from second to third with 14 percent.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee both sit at 6 percent, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul at 4 percent, and Ohio Governor John Kasich at 2 percent.
Walker has effectively moved to the lower tier, getting less than one-half of one percent, according to CNN.
Walker has been sliding in the polls for weeks now. He was at 5 percent in an earlier CNN/ORC poll in early September.
The governor was at the top of polls for most of the year and was leading Iowa, but has lost ground to Trump and other political outsiders.
Now he joins other lower-tier candidates such as South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former New York Gov. George Pataki.
The poll was of 1,006 Americans conducted by telephone from Sept. 17 to Sept. 19.
