The big spike in Fiorina's numbers is a spike in her negative numbers; her unfavorablity rating among independents has jumped from 23 to 40 percent in a couple of months.
And this week, a new web video designed to drive up those negatives has gone viral.
The ad takes clips that it identifies as coming from a Washington D.C. tea party rally in March and then shows Fiorina at a tea party rally in Pleasanton held one month later.
"What I see out here are a bunch of hard working Americans who care enough to come out and get politically active and express their views and I agree with them," Fiorina said in the ad.
Factcheck: The ad is grossly misleading. The pictures of people behaving badly aren't from the Pleasanton rally and Fiorina's comments were edited to cut out her comments about extremists.
Here's the full quote:
"You know, what I see out here is a bunch of hard working Americans who care enough to come out and get politically active and express their views and I'm sure there are extremes all over this country on the fringes, but these folks are making a huge difference in the political dialogue in this country and good for them good for them."
The tea party rally in Pleasanton was very peaceful, with none of the violence and bad behavior portrayed in the ad.
The ad's producer defends the use of pictures from other rallies, saying Fiorina has not expressly denounced the fringe elements. Robert Greenwald says his video is fair to link her to extremists until she denounces them.
ABC7 political analyst Bruce Cain says the ad is an obvious attempt to smear the tea party and link Fiorina to radicals.
"But that's a very common tactic in politics and it's up to the dispassionate observers to say, 'No Carly Fiorina is not endorsing the radical element,'" Cain said.
Cain says the more accurate and potentially more damaging part of the web video was Sarah Palin's endorsement of Fiorina.
