Former business executive Carly Fiorina has jumped more than 6 percentage points from where she stood on the eve of the second Republican primary debate, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos rolling presidential poll.
Fiorina’s 6.1-point boost has propelled her to third place behind GOP front-runner Donald Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, and reflects the greatest leap percentage-wise of any Republican candidate in the two weeks since the Sept. 16 debate.
The only female GOP candidate, currently in the No. 2 spot in the Washington Examiner‘s presidential power rankings, also took the lead over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a head-to-head matchup in Quinnipiac University’s latest survey.
As she’s risen in the polls, Fiorina has faced significant blowback from both the Democratic National Committee and her Republican rivals.
Shortly after the second debate, during which she invited Clinton and President Obama to watch the series of undercover videos released this summer depicting Planned Parenthood officials haggling over fetal body parts, Fiorina became the subject of DNC fundraising emails.
“Nothing Carly Fiorina will say can excuse the horrible choices she made at [Hewlett-Packard] or the falsehoods she peddled at last night’s debate. This is going to be one very awkward job interview for her,” DNC National spokeswoman Holly Shulman wrote in an email to supporters 24 hours after the debate.
Trump has also gone after the rising GOP darling, describing Fiorina’s voice as headache-inducing on Twitter following the debate and blasting her record at Hewlett-Packard on the campaign trail.
“The Carly thing is kind of amazing,” he reportedly told supporters during a recent speech in Rochester, N.H. “Everybody says she made a good speech yesterday, but I don’t get it. She did a terrible, terrible, terrible job at Hewlett-Packard.”
In the same Rutgers/Ipsos poll, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio were the only other Republican hopefuls who have climbed since their participation in the second prime-time debate.
Paul jumped 2.3 points, bringing him to 4.7 percent support among GOP voters, while Rubio jumped 1.7 points and currently stands behind Paul at 3.6 percent. That would be a shift, since according to the latest RealClearPolitics polling average, Rubio leads Paul by more than 7 percentage points among Republican nationally.
The Kentucky senator delivered an impassioned speech on the Senate floor Tuesday about wasteful government spending and voted against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Continuing Resolution later that evening. Meanwhile, Rubio was one of four Republican senators who did not participate in the vote on the CR Tuesday night.
Each of the three Republican hopefuls — Fiorina, Paul and Rubio — have worked to convince voters they do not represent the political elite or GOP establishment, though Fiorina’s position as a non-politician appears to be providing her with an advantage over the two Republican senators.
