Poll Shows Carly Fiorina Won the Second GOP Debate, Trump Still Leads Field

In a new poll that will likely be meaningless in 414 days, GOP primary voters said Carly Fiorina won the second debate. An NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll found that nearly one-third of Republicans believed Fiorina performed best in the Wednesday night debate. Her debate performance significantly changed Fiorina’s standing — she jumped from the bottom of the proverbial pack to third (a separate CNN poll places her in second).

And yet despite her impressive (yet heavily criticized) performance, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO is still well behind Donald Trump. 29% of Republican voters still side with Trump and Ben Carson remains in second place. Jeb Bush remained steady with 8% while Scott Walker saw the largest drop from 12% to 3%.

The poll also identified issues most important to GOP voters—a perspective that might explain why Trump continues to poll well. MSNBC reports that the following issues are most important to voters:

A solid majority of Republican voters (70%) said they are be more likely to support a candidate who would withdraw U.S. support from the multinational deal with Iran.

Fifty-nine percent said they are less likely to vote for a candidate who supports a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

A slim majority (53%) said they are more likely to vote for someone who would send ground troops to fight ISIS in Iraq or Syria.

A candidate who supports defunding Planned Parenthood also gets a positive response from Republican voters, with 61% saying they are more likely to support a candidate who wanted to cut federal funding to the organization.