Rick Perry lost 64 percent of his support after Trump entered the race

Former Gov Rick Perry lost 64 percent of support.

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last updated 14 September 2015

While Donald Trump has stolen away support from virtually every Republican presidential candidate, no one has lost as much as Rick Perry, who suspended his campaign on Friday. A survey by YouGov found that after Trump entered the 2016 race in June, the former Texas governor lost a whopping 64 percent of his support to the billionaire reality TV star. Next up: Chris Christie, who lost 57 percent of his support to Trump. Others with notable defections include Ted Cruz, who lost 39 percent, and Carly Fiorina, who lost 37 percent. The candidate least affected by Trump's entry? Jeb Bush, who only saw 14 percent of his supporters defect.

The New York Times hedges that the candidates that saw the biggest losses to Trump, such as Christie and Perry, "did not start with large numbers of voters in this survey, so any defection made a bigger dent in their shares." It's also worth noting that Trump had not yet entered the race when the first interviews for the survey were conducted in May (it ran through August). But still, out of 608 Republican voters surveyed, a majority (54 percent) had changed their mind from their original choice, with 20 percent defecting to The Donald.