Poll: Carson, Fiorina, Huckabee gain ground in 2016 race

Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and Mike Huckabee have each earned more support from GOP primary voters since launching presidential campaigns last month, a new poll finds.

Republicans’ support for one of those candidates has risen since a similar sampling in April, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey released on Sunday.

It said that Fiorina saw the biggest jump in GOP primary voters’ backing.

The former Hewlett-Packard CEO now has 31 percent of Republicans saying they would support her, up from 17 percent in April, it said.

It added that those results are roughly even with the 29 percent who would not back Fiorina’s candidacy.

Carson, the poll said, now commands 50 percent approval from positive voters.

That number, it added, is up from 41 percent in April for the retired neurosurgeon.

The survey additionally saw Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, nabbing 65 percent of positive voter support in June.

He is thus up 13 points from a similar poll in April, it said, where he earned 52 percent instead.

All three Oval Office candidates formally launched their runs in May, just after the previous Wall Street Journal/NBC News sampling.

Their latest sampling found bad news for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), another 2016 contender.

Paul now receives 49 percent support from potential voters, a 10-point drop since April.

He previously received 59 percent backing during a similar sampling taken that month.

Paul’s drop in popularity comes after he publicly battled over Republicans over the National Security Agency (NSA) last month.

The Kentucky lawmaker fought his own party tooth-and-nail against the NSA’s bulk, warrantless collection of individual phone record metadata.

The Wall Street Journal and NBC News conducted their latest sampling from June 14-18.

It polled 1,000 adults with a 3.1 percentage point margin of error.

Of the 236 GOP primary voters questioned, it had a 6.38 percentage point margin of error.