If Donald Trump is definitely the Republican candidate with the biggest chances of becoming the GOP’s nominee in the race for the White House, he doesn’t stand a chance on Facebook, where former neurosurgeon Ben Carson is clearly the most popular candidate.
This weekend, a photo with Ben Carson holding a “Merry Christmas” sign went viral and helped the Republican becoming the candidate with the biggest number of fans on the social network, surpassing Donald Trump.
Conservative Christian voters are likely to support Carson
Of course, the caption of the photo also helped Mr. Carson a lot, as it was reading “Not afraid to say Merry Christmas”. Therefore, more than half a million users like the post, while the share count surpassed 45,000 as of Saturday morning. Also, his Christmas message will play well with conservative Christian voters.
Still, the fact that his post went viral doesn’t mean that much for the Republican, since lately, he’s been losing territory to Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, if the latest national polls are to be believed.
Way behind Trump and Rubio, equal to Cruz
To be more specific, the Quinnipiac University released a poll this month revealing the Ben Carson has lost 7 percent, compared to last month, exiting the ‘top GOP candidates” club. With a total of 16 percent, he is way behind Donald Trump (27%) and Marco Rubio (17 percent).
The main reason between the decline comes after a series of stories about the doctor’s adolescence – involving anger and violence – and his well-known lack of experience when it comes to foreign policy.
Besides this, the terrorist attacks from November 13, in Paris, alongside the San Bernardino shootings, also had an impact on his popularity. It seems that the GOP voters don’t consider Ben Carson prepared enough to deal with such situations, in the eventuality of him being elected as president.
Ben Carson still has a lot to learn, at least about foreign policy
Last month, during an interview on “Fox News Sunday”, Carson wasn’t able to name a specific country leader he would contact to pull together an international coalition to counter ISIS. Also, like this wasn’t enough, he incorrectly suggested that China was one of the countries involved in the Syrian conflict.
Despite this, Ben Carson is going through a very interesting situation, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
“What Carson is going through is a classic phase of discovery and decline. Voters liked what they heard about him initially, but they didn’t know that much about him. He’s a celebrity, sure, but much less of a celebrity than Trump.
Now they’ve learned more, and a certain number of GOP voters have decided to look elsewhere. This was a defining characteristic of the 2012 race. Michele Bachmann rose and fell. So did Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum.”
What will happen to Ben Carson remains to be seen, but currently, he doesn’t seem to have a chance against Donald Trump, even though on Facebook he is the most popular candidate.
