At the beginning of November, Ben Carson knew he was in trouble.
When the media turned the screws on his candidacy and finally put in some homework, the candidate’s past – or more accurately – the candidate’s retelling of his past came home to haunt him.
By mid-November 2015, Carson started his death spiral in the polls, going from nearly 25% support to an insignificant 9% in the latest polls.
No other candidate in the 2016 race has fallen so far, so fast.
Even Carly Fiorina, who polled briefly as high as 11.8% thanks to an insult by Trump, has only dropped two points from her average.
With Carson all but out of the race, where are the good doctor’s supporters headed?
From the looks of the numbers, they split nearly evenly for Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
Since November, both Cruz and Trump have gone up another 10 points each with Trump going from 24.8% to 34.5% and Cruz going from 8.8% to 19% in the latest polls.
The Cruz campaign was banking on peeling off much more support from Carson as the neurosurgeon appealed to an evangelical, anti-establishment base.
On paper, Cruz and Carson have much more in common from an ideological standpoint than Carson and Trump.
And that means trouble for the Cruz camp.
The anti-establishment/anti-politician vibe sweeping the nation appears to outrank traditional social scores that politicians use like pawns throughout their campaign.
If Senator Cruz was only able to rally 50% of Carson supporters to jump on his bandwagon, as more individuals are motivated to vote, he’ll have a tough time convincing them to ignore the “huuuge” personality of Donald Trump and vote instead for a one-term senator who walks, talks and acts like politician.