Huge Surge In Polls Sees Big-Name Candidates Lose Out To Underdogs

The CNN/ORCnational poll reported yesterday yielded results that were jolting, to say the least, as several of the lesser-known candidates, Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio, received a lot more love than they had in the polls tallied earlier this month.

What is even more surprising than the surge is that the huge amount of ground gained in the polls by those candidates came at the expense of the two candidates that had seen the most support, Ben Carson and Donald Trump.

The candidate who fared the worst in comparison to the last round of polls, however, was Donald Trump. He is still leading, but The Donald’s previously held 36 percent of Republican votes took a hugely negative surge down, to 24 percent. Trump himself expressed his dismay with the downward surge in a CNN interview.

“I’m a little surprised, because other polls have come out where I actually picked up after the debate, I actually gained after the debate.”

The candidate whose support experienced the largest upward surge, on the other hand, was former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. Fiorina is now in second place in the polls, boasting 15 percent of the vote compared to the meager three percent found earlier in September. Carly talked to Fox News Sunday about why she thinks the massive surge occurred.

“It’s obviously a very important moment because now more people know who I am. As people come to know me and they understand who I am and what I’ve done and, most importantly, what I will do, they tend to support me.”

With her comment, Fiorina may have been alluding to a point none of the candidates wanted to state straight-up — and for good reason: it is possible that the public is getting to the point where they are actually learning enough about the candidates to make their own decisions that are not based on pre-existing knowledge about the runners.

In other words, the two candidates who experienced a major negative surge in the polls, Carson and Trump, both came into the election with selling points that did not take any political research to appeal to voters in the polls. Maybe the public is starting to learn about the actual personas and policies of the candidates and is beginning to judge the candidates based upon that rather than upon their pre-existing reputations. This phenomenon is allowing candidates who came in as underdogs to surge in popularity.

Do you agree? If not, why do you think is the reason for the unprecedentedly large surge in the polls? Leave your opinions in the comments section below.

Also, in case you have not seen the debate, here is the full video coverage from Metro News.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8sEy7DJIZQ

[Image via Justin Sullivan / Getty Images]