We knew it was going to take a few days for some hard poll numbers to sink in after the second GOP debate, but this morning CNN / ORC has finished the first tallies and while one thing stayed the same, many others changed markedly. Here’s the short version. Trump still on top, Fiorina charging up after him, Carson fades, Walker disappears. From the source.

Carly Fiorina has rocketed into second place in the Republican presidential field on the heels another strong debate and Donald Trump has lost some support, a new national CNN/ORC poll shows. The survey, conducted the three days after 23 million people tuned in to Wednesday night’s GOP debate on CNN, shows that Trump is still the party’s front-runner with 24% support. That, though, is an 8 percentage point decrease from earlier in the month when a similar poll had him at 32%. Fiorina ranks second with 15% support — up from 3% in early September. She’s just ahead of Ben Carson’s 14%, though Carson’s support has also declined from 19% in the previous poll.

(Here is the pdf of the full results for your perusal.)

The top five, and perhaps most shockingly, the bottom of the barrel come in as follows:

Trump: 24%

Fiorina: 15%

Carsom: 14%

Rubio: 11%

Bush: 9%

[…]

Walker

First we go to the middle of the pack. Jeb Bush didn’t move at all. He was at 9 in the last CNN / ORC survey and he’s still stuck there now. There was some buzz about Christie doing well during the debate, but he moved up from 2% to 3%. I’m not sure if that’s in “bandwagon” territory yet, Governor. But if there was one loser for the night it has to be Scott Walker. He faded into the background during the debate and at this point he is registering lower than the background noise level.

The only other big loser has to be Trump. He dropped from 32 to 24 in a fairly short period of time, and his portrayal as the designated pinata at the debate certainly didn’t help matters. Carson also took a substantial hit. He was at 19% the last time this survey was done and still maintains a respectable 14%, but he’s heading in the wrong direction.

Your winners for the post-date period? If it wasn’t obvious already, the night belonged to Carly Fiorina and it seems that the voters were paying attention. She went from 3% to 15%, rocketing into second place and is probably responsible for most of the drop in Trump’s numbers since they are both in that outsider lane. (Also, Rasmussen now finds that more than 40% of GOP primary voters find it “likely” that Fiorina could wind up being the nominee. That’s a massive surge.) But the other big winner was Marco Rubio. He had a solid performance and just jumped from 3% (formerly tied with Fiorina) up to 11%. He’s in double digits for the first time and is the last of four hopefuls in serious contention at this point.

Of course, the road is long and many bumps remain along the way. Anyone jumping this fast can fall just as rapidly with one slip-up or a bad showing in the October contest. So with that, I’ll toss it back to you. Is this finally the beginning of the end for Trump which everyone has incorrectly predicted over and over and over again? Or is this just where the tough sledding starts and he has some real competition in his lane from Carly? And on the establishment side of the house, has Marco just hit the moment where the student passes the teacher and sent Bush to the bench? Share your thoughts.