This morning's big surge for Ted Cruz in the latest Iowa Quinnipiac poll got a lot of attention -- but we also took notice of Ben Carson's big slide. The former neurosurgeon dropped from 28 percent to 18 percent support in just four weeks in the Q-poll. A snapshot of polling trends shows that it's possible that Carson has peaked nationally, too (Inserting caveat about his still sky-high upside potential with GOP primary voters).
Here's a set of numbers from the Q-poll that really stuck out to us: The highest share of Iowa Republican voters (30 percent) said that they thought Trump would be the best candidate to handle terrorism, while Cruz won out (at 24 percent) when participants were asked which candidate was best suited to deal with foreign policy overall. Carson's numbers on the same two questions? Not even close -- in the low single digits on both measures. Even though the economy remains a top issue for most voters in Iowa and nationally, the commander-in-chief test is definitely getting applied, post-Paris. That's likely spelling trouble for the one-time co-frontrunner.
