Rand Paul appears to be a victim of bad timing.

The Kentucky senator has failed to catch fire like some of his fellow GOP presidential candidates, but the Fox Business Network decision to boot him for the first time off the main stage at Thursday night’s debate in South Carolina is a potential knockout punch for his flailing candidacy.

The network made that decision based on Paul’s standing in public polls. Fox Business had said last month that the top six candidates in the five most recent national polls as of Monday evening would make the main stage, joined by any other candidates who appear in the top five in either Iowa or New Hampshire — the two states that vote first in the nominating process. Paul was in seventh place in all three averages, according to Politico calculations.

But a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll in Iowa released Wednesday morning has Paul at 5 percent — alone in fifth place. In fact, if the Des Moines Register poll is included on the list of the five most recent polls, it gets Paul into a tie for fifth place with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at 4.2 percent. That, presumably, would get Paul onto the main stage.

Read the article “Did Poor Timing in One Poll Knock Rand Paul Out of the GOP Debate?” on politico.com.