Who Benefits If Carson And Fiorina Drop Out?
Fiorina and Carson are projected to finish a distant seventh and eighth, respectively, in New Hampshire. Despite their poor finish today, they have the support between them of about one in nine Republican voters nationally: In our latest national polling average, Fiorina had 2.5 percent and Carson 8.3 percent. So what happens if they drop out of the race? Cruz probably would benefit more than Trump would.
The online pollsters at Morning Consult added up results from January polls it conducted among 5,456 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents nationally, asking for their first and second choices among the candidates. So far Morning Consult has published second-choice data for supporters of candidates who have already dropped out. They shared with us the data for Carson and Fiorina. Among Carson supporters, 24 percent had Cruz as their second choice, 19 percent named Trump and 10 percent named Rubio. Fiorina had far fewer supporters, but they might be higher leverage: 23 percent said they supported Rubio, 14 percent named Cruz and 5 percent named Trump. (Another 18 percent named Carson, and in this scenario those supporters would need to go to their third choice, or maybe skip voting.) Of course, these polls preceded the votes in Iowa and New Hampshire, and voters’ second choices could be even more volatile than their first choices are.