WASHINGTON – It’s now Donald Trump’s turn to be perplexed by presidential-election polls.

“Well, I don’t get it,” he said in a TV interview Tuesday morning.

“Some of these polls coming out, I don’t quite get it.”

His befuddlement marks a dramatic twist on a summer pastime that swept over politics in America and beyond: the guessing-game of how a billionaire who bragged constantly about himself and insulted seemingly everyone else had seized such a stranglehold on the Republican primary polls.

Now it’s Trump who is puzzled.

The source of his disbelief is Ben Carson. Multiple polls have the retired neurosurgeon at No. 1 in Iowa and, according to one new survey, he has even surged past Trump on the national level, albeit within the margin of error.

Part of Carson’s success is no mystery: He’s deeply religious and a hit with evangelicals. He may be more consistently conservative than Trump. Yet his speaking style skews toward the somnolent — a stylistic contrast to Trump’s attention-grabbing antics likelier to raise eyebrows than let audiences slump into neverland.

Trump just doesn’t get it.

“I was No. 1 pretty much in Iowa from the beginning and I would say we’re doing very well there. So I’m a little bit surprised,” Trump said of the latest polls, in his MSNBC interview Tuesday. “We’ll have to see.”

He also delivered this warning to Carson, speaking from personal experience: “One thing I know about a front-runner — you get analyzed 15 different ways from China. A lot of things will come out.”

And thus marked a new spectacle in a campaign full of them; Trump, playing catch up. For the first time in this campaign, a candidate so many have deemed offensive must now go on the offensive.

He’s hitting Carson on four fronts:

— He called Carson’s super-PAC a “scam,” and a “disgrace.” The law forbids official co-operation between campaigns and these third-party committees that can raise unlimited funds — and Trump appeared to be accusing his rival of improper partnerships.

— Abortion flip-flops. Carson is so resolutely pro-life that he’s likened abortion to slavery. But back when he was a neurosurgeon he referred patients to abortion doctors and he’s struggled to explain when he’d allow exceptions.

— Dullness. Trump has tagged Carson with the same dreaded label he bestowed upon Jeb Bush: “Low energy.”

— Religion. Trump appeared to be attempting a drive-by smear on Carson’s Seventh Day Adventist faith. Trump said during a Florida rally last week: “I’m Presbyterian. Boy, that’s down the middle of the road, folks, in all fairness. I mean, Seventh Day Adventist, I don’t know about.”

There’s hypocrisy in at least two of those attacks, as Carson pointed out.

First of all, Trump himself has performed somersaults on the abortion issue — declaring himself pro-choice in old interviews, before having what he’s described as a change of heart.

And on religion, he attacked Carson a while ago for questioning his own faith. Trump had referred to the eucharist as a “little cracker” and refused to name a favourite Bible verse.

“I was questioning his faith and he went ballistic on that,” Carson told Fox News Sunday. “So, it seems a little interesting that he would now be doing that. You know, I really refuse to really get into the mud pit.”

As for his energy, Carson said there was a time when he was volatile. As a young man, he said, he chased people with bricks, baseball bats and hammers and tried stabbing a friend during an argument when he was 14. Carson later went on to a career as a surgeon and researcher.

“Fortunately my life has been changed and I’m a very different person now,” said the soft-speaking physician.

Both men lead more established Republican figures by a wide margin. However, there’s pressure among the establishment wing to narrow the field and rally behind a more conventional candidate.

The only candidate with elected experience polling in the top three is first-term Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. One of his political mentors, Jeb Bush, has recently had to lay off staff.