All that pandering to the right wing is finally paying off for Ted Cruz in Iowa, where even the Christian right is waking up to the realization that Ben Carson is a wack job. Cruz is now running second behind Donald Trump and has more than doubled his support since last month in the latest Quinnipiac poll.
Iowa: Nov. 24 (Oct. 22)
Donald Trump: 25% (20%)
Ted Cruz: 23% (10%)
Ben Carson: 18% (28%)
Marco Rubio: 13% (13%)
Carson's support collapsed in the last month among both tea party voters and evangelicals, where he lost 14 points and 12 points respectively. Meanwhile, Cruz doubled his support among both groups in the same time period. Cruz now has the organizational heft and the war chest to be a real player in Iowa, among several other early voting states in which he's concentrated on building his ground game. It's the scenario his team has been waiting for, reports Katie Glueck.
For months, their candidate lagged both Trump and Carson, in Iowa and nationally. Carson was cutting into Cruz’s base of evangelical support while Trump locked down some of the same tea party activists who had previously made Cruz a national star. But Cruz stuck close to his script, refusing to criticize the candidates who were luring away his natural base while people close to his campaign insisted he had plenty of time to move numbers before needing to go on offense.
So instead, he stayed under the radar all summer, organizing in the early states and in those that vote in March, and focusing on fundraising, announcing last month that he had more cash on hand than any other GOP candidate. Now, his campaign is boasting one of the most robust operations in the country, with more than 100,000 volunteers nationwide and 2,500 in Iowa. He’s also organized in every county in the first four voting states.