Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida was the winner of this week's Republican presidential debate, with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas a close second and billionaire businessman Donald Trump a distant third, an exclusive Opinion Savvy/Newsmax Poll released Friday reveals.
And the big loser was former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who was deemed to have been the worst performer during the two-hour GOP slugfest on CNBC, the survey found.
The telephone poll of 979 likely 2016 Republican primary voters showed:
- Marco Rubio - 28.1 percent
- Ted Cruz - 27 percent
- Donald Trump - 19.4 percent
- Dr. Ben Carson - 9.4 percent
- Chris Christie - 5.3 percent
- Jeb Bush - 3.5 percent
- Carly Fiorina - 3.1 percent
- John Kasich - 2 percent
- Sen. Rand Paul - .7 percent
- Mike Huckabee - .3 percent
A small percentage of voters — 1.2 percent — said they were undecided following the two-hour debate.
Asked their opinion of who "lost, or performed the worst," Bush was the runaway choice with 52 percent, followed by Kasich with 12.2 percent — the only two contenders with double-digit negatives.
In third place for worst performance was:
- Donald Trump - 9.8 percent
- Rand Paul - 9.6 percent
- Ben Carson - 3.9 percent
- Carly Fiorina - 3.3 percent
- Ted Cruz - 1.7 percent
- Mike Huckabee and Christie tied with 1.4 percent each
- Marco Rubio with 1.1 percent.
The poll asked voters who they would cast their ballots for if a primary or caucus vote was held now:
- Trump - 23.9 percent
- Carson - 20.2 percent
- Cruz -19.5 percent
- Rubio - 14.1 percent
- Bush - 5.6 percent
- Fiorina - 5 percent
- Christie - 2.6 percent
- Huckabee - 2 percent
- Bobby Jindal - .9 percent
- Rand Paul - .7 percent
- George Pataki - .3 percent
Another 2.7 were undecided.