Picking Carly Fiorina as his running mate may have actually hurt Ted Cruz

(Image credit: Gerardo Mora/Getty Images)

last updated 3 May 2016

Sen. Ted Cruz named Carly Fiorina as his running mate last week in a final gambit to edge out Donald Trump for the GOP nomination. Unfortunately for the Cruz-Fiorina campaign, poll results released Tuesday indicate it didn't help.

Six in 10 voters said the addition of Fiorina to Cruz's ticket had "no impact" on their decision to support or oppose his candidacy, a Morning Consult survey revealed, while 22 percent said the veep pick made them less likely to vote Cruz. Only 18 percent report they are now more likely to be Cruz voters, suggesting the announcement may have slightly decreased Cruz's election success.

The same poll discovered Fiorina still has fairly low name recognition — more than a third of respondents did not know who she is — and among those who are aware of her, most hold an unfavorable opinion.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.