Ben Carson, who led in some national polls and was handily beating Donald Trump in Iowa, has seen his near front-runner status collapse to third-tier, according to recent polls.
Political commentators have explained the retired neurosurgeon's sudden decline by pointing to Carson's stumble over foreign policy questions, an area gaining significant attention with voters in the wake of the the recent ISIS attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California.
At the same time Sen. Ted Cruz appears to be coalescing support from evangelicals, a bedrock voting group for GOP voters.
Carson had been leading the group, but a wave of negative stories in Christian media has undermined his candidacy.
Carson has declined to apologize for
using fetal tissue taken from aborted fetuses during medical research he conducted in the 1990s.
Christian activists have also been angry that Carson was an advocate of gay rights initiatives when he served as a director on major corporate boards, including Kellogg and Costco.
A new national
NBC/Wall Street Journal poll out this weekend showed Trump still leading the race with 27 percent, with Cruz second at 22 percent.
Carson came in a distant fourth with 11 percent, behind rising Marco Rubio with 15 percent.
Two polls in the key battleground state of Iowa show Carson’s greatest erosion.
A
Fox News poll shows Carson in fourth place with just 10 percent, and Cruz leading Trump 28 percent to 26 percent.
Also, the
Bloomberg/Des Moines Register poll released this weekend has Carson in third place with 13 percent, trailing well behind Cruz’s 31 percent.
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