Getty Scott Walker plunges in the polls in Iowa The Wisconsin governor, once at the top in Iowa, is now badly trailing Trump, Carson and many others.

Scott Walker's summer plunge was put in stark relief on Friday, with a new Quinnipiac University survey showing the Republican presidential candidate polling near the bottom of the heap in Iowa.

Walker, the governor of neighboring Wisconsin, dropped 15 points in the state in the last two months in Qunnipiac's poll. In July, Walker led the pack at 18 percent. This time, he's near the bottom of the field of 17, at 3 percent. He earned similar support in last weekend's NBC News/Marist poll, at 5 percent.


The latest numbers underscore the cruel turn of events for Walker, who caught fire earlier this year with his plainspoken style and his track record of taking on and triumphing over the unions in Wisconsin. He has since tanked due to series of fumbles and a lackluster performance both on the campaign trail and in last month's first GOP debate.

The POLITICO Caucus, a weekly bipartisan survey of the top activists, last week named Walker the biggest loser of the summer in the Republican field, with 56 percent of insiders in Iowa saying the governor had lost the season.

"He can't seem to find his way on any given issue with a handheld GPS," one Iowa Republican said of Walker last week. "He's been on all three sides of every two-sided issue. For the last two months hasn't made a single policy pronouncement that he or his staff hasn't had to clarify or clear up within two hours. When you're reduced to saying 'yeah' doesn't mean 'yes,' you're in trouble. 'Unintimidated' has given way to 'uninformed' and 'unprepared.'"

Despite the rough top-line numbers in Friday's poll, Walker's favorability numbers in Iowa remain solid, at 62 percent to 15 percent, ranking fourth among candidates in terms of net positive sentiment in the Quinnipiac survey. Walker will return to the state for more campaign events this weekend, including a tailgate event at the annual Iowa-Iowa State football game on Saturday in Ames, where Donald Trump, among other candidates, will also be campaigning.

Once again, Trump and Ben Carson are on top of the leaderboard with Friday's results.

Trump, who has sparred with the soft-spoken Carson over his faith in recent days, earned 27 percent, compared with 21 percent for the retired Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz finished a distant third with 9 percent, followed by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at 6 percent. Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio drew 5 percent each, while Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee both nabbed 4 percent.

Rounding out the field, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal received 2 percent, while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum all drew 1 percent. Two former governors — Jim Gilmore, of Virginia, and George Pataki, of New York — did not register a point, while 4 percent remain undecided.

However, 25 percent of likely caucus-goers also put Trump at the top of the list of candidates they would definitely not support, followed by Bush at 23 percent and Christie at 14 percent.

In terms of favorability, Carson performed better than Trump, as 79 percent to 6 percent had a favorable opinion of him, while 60 percent to 35 percent said the same of the current leader of the polls. Likely caucus participants also responded more favorably to Carson's honesty and trustworthiness (88 percent to 4 percent) compared to Trump's (56 percent to 35 percent).

Carson also outperformed Trump by 20 points when Republicans were asked whether the respective candidates had the right temperament and personality to handle an international crisis. Carson drew 72 percent approval to 14 percent disapproval in that regard, while Trump's support was more split, at 52 percent to 41 percent.

“Trump’s 27 – 21 percent lead over Carson obscures what appears to be the former surgeon’s stronger growth potential in recruiting new supporters when other candidates leave the race. Carson has a higher favorability rating than Trump and a higher score for honesty and empathy,” said Peter A. Brown, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, in a release. “Trump has an edge on leadership, but Carson has a 20-point margin when it comes to having the right temperament and personality to handle an international crisis.”

Neither Trump nor Carson has ever served in elected office, and that appears to be to their benefit, as 79 percent to 15 percent said experience outside of Washington is better than inside for a president.

Friday's poll is the latest in a series of surveys on the national and state levels that have Trump and Carson as the top two candidates. On a national level, Trump and Carson finished at 32 percent and 19 percent, respectively, in Thursday's CNN/ORC poll; and in a Monmouth University poll released last Friday, Trump led by a comparable 12-point margin, at 30 percent to 18 percent.

In Iowa specifically, Trump took 29 percent and Carson 22 percent in last weekend's NBC News/Marist poll, while a Monmouth survey conducted in late August found the two candidates tied at 23 percent.

As with the Democratic survey released Thursday, Quinnipiac polled 1,038 likely Republican caucus-goers in Iowa via landlines and cellphones, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.