Well, we can begin to talk about who will make the cut and who will not for entry into the first Republican presidential debate in Cleveland on Thursday. With the NBC/WSJ poll coming in and showing mostly bad news for politicians across the board, there are still some who are getting ready to breath a sigh of relief.
It looks like Chris Christie and John Kasich will avoid disaster and a seat at the kiddie table. On the other hand, first degree felony-indicted Rick Perry should probably wrap up his second “Oops” try at this.
Here’s the expected cut, and I’ll have some observations below:
- Trump: 23.2%
- Undecided/Other: 16.2%
- Bush: 12.8%
- Walker: 10.6%
- Carson: 6.6%
- Huckabee: 6.6%
- Cruz: 6.2%
- Rubio: 5.2%
- Paul: 4.8%
- Christie: 3.4%
- Kasich: 2.8%
Not making the cut:
- Perry: 2.0%
- Santorum: 1.4%
- Jindal: 1.2%
- Fiorina: 1.0%
- Graham: 0.4%
- Pataki: 0.2%
- Gilmore: 0.2%
When you look at this average of polls, you can see that 83.8% of respondents express support for at least one of these candidates, but 16.4% of them do not. That’s not a terribly high number considering that it’s so early and a lot of people either don’t know some of the candidates or want to take a wait-and-see approach before throwing their support behind anyone.
As for the folks who have been relegated to the kiddie table, they collectively have managed to get the support of only 8.6% of the Republican base. What this means is that about 75% of poll respondents are backing a candidate who will be on the Fox News debate stage, while 25% are not. In such a wide field, 25% is a big chunk of change. It exceeds the number of people who have thrown their hat in Donald Trump’s three-ring circus.
Another way of looking at these numbers is to evaluate how the media-ordained frontrunners are doing. What should stand out immediately is that Marco Rubio and Rand Paul are polling below fellow senator Ted Cruz.
Now, Rand Paul is a special case because of his unorthodox views on the several issues, but Marco Rubio is a darling of the Republican establishment and the Beltway press. So far, though, he isn’t showing us much.
Now, there’s really only one guy on this whole list that everyone can imagine being president, and that’s Jeb Bush. We know that he has the connections and experience to staff up an administration and do the nuts and bolts aspects of running the country. That doesn’t mean he’d be popular, successful, or make decisions any better than his brother, but he meets the basic plausibility test better than Ben Carson, let’s put it that way. Yet, 87% of the Republican base is expressing support either for someone else or for no one at all. So, while Jeb can take comfort in the fact that he’s in second place and that only enormously implausible Donald Trump is ahead of him, he still has to recognize the magnitude of the rejection he’s getting in these poll numbers. Just based on name recognition alone, Jeb should be dominating these polls, and he’s not.
Scott Walker should be similarly disappointed that about 90% of voters are picking someone else or no one at all. But he’s probably in the best position here. There’s a huge anyone-but-a-Bush electorate out there, but the anyone-but-Walker contingent is extremely small. He has good reason to hope that as his name recognition grows, so will his support.
Now, lastly, I want to discuss governors Chris Christie of New Jersey and John Kasich of Ohio. They both made the cut, which was especially crucial for Kasich because the debate will be held in his home state. What they have is executive experience. And their experience is current, unlike the gubernatorial experience of Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee. In this, their main competitor is Scott Walker. Their job is to outshine Walker somehow and become the main alternative to Jeb. The culture warriors, Carson and Huckabee, will have life in Iowa but not much beyond it. The senators, Cruz, Paul, and Rubio, will be saddled with their association with Congress. So, if anyone at the bottom of this list has real potential to rise to the top, it’s Christie and Kasich.
A lot will depend on how Walker conducts himself. On paper, he’s the guy. But if he stumbles, there will be a big opening. My guess is that Christie is too damaged and too flawed to catch on, or to sustain it if he does. So, I look at this race right now, as it gets set to really begin, as four separate contests.
1. Will Trump come back to Earth or coast to the nomination? Almost everyone assumes he will crash sooner or later, but I sense some folks are getting a little uncertain about this.
2. Will Jeb rise to the top and stay persistently above the rest? How locked is the anyone-but-a-Bush vote?
3. Will Walker perform at the expected level and become the main competitor for Jeb or will he slip up and leave an opening for John Kasich?
4. Finally, among the senators, will Rubio emerge as the class of the field, or will Ted Cruz succeed in sucking up enough of the Trump/Anger vote to emerge as the third place choice?
As always, Rand Paul is a special case. Can he rally enough of a rump group to challenge for second or third place finishes with the hope that he’ll outlast the rest and get into a one-on-one contest with Jeb or Walker?
My guess is that he will fizzle badly and be gone by South Carolina, but this is partly because he just doesn’t seem to want to campaign very much. A better candidate might be able to do more with the support that is out there for Paul’s message.
So, in summary, as this begins, I see it as Trump’s race until people tire of his act, which may happen before Iowa or after, and not at all. But, assuming that Trump has no lasting power, it will become a race between either Jeb/Walker/Rubio or Jeb/Kasich/Cruz. In the first scenario, Walker will be the main beneficiary of Trump’s explosion, while in the second scenario it will be Cruz who sucks up most of his support.
Bush’s problem, as I see it, is that close to half the Republican electorate is currently either supporting Trump, some of the also-rans, or is undecided. I consider virtually all of those votes to be out of Bush’s reach. I don’t how many Cruz, Huckabee, or Carson voters are within his reach, either. So, Bush’s ability to grow seems limited, and I don’t see that same problem for Walker, Rubio or Kasich.
Walker has skeletons to worry about, but his biggest liability is lack of charisma and intelligence. Rubio is disadvantaged by a variety of factors, including his own rather massive skeletons, but also by being stuck in Congress, having brokered the immigration deal in the Senate, and simply by being a racial minority in a party that currently wants a white nativist nominee. Kasich probably is best positioned to move up, but he’s peddling a compassionate conservatism that doesn’t seem to fit the mood and that also most easily overlaps with Jeb’s base of support. It could be that a Trump collapse just moves to other protest candidates in an unpredictable and rotating way, but I do see Cruz as best-suited to capitalize on it. He could become a weaker and diminished vehicle for Trump’s message, but one that is strong enough and anti-Washington enough and anti-Republican leadership enough to become the third alternative.
We will see shortly.
Update [2015-8-4 15:43:7 by BooMan]: Here are the final FOX numbers:
Trump 26
Bush 15
Walker 9
Carson 7
Cruz 6
Huckabee 6
Rubio 5
Paul 5
Christie 3
Kasich 3
Fiorina 2
Santorum 2
Perry 1
Jindal 1
I’m thinking that Trump is going to let these children demonstrate their petty nonsense while he presents a quiet Presidential stand alone, with a few Reaganesque jabs. It goes against his grain to be the quiet one but their noise is to his benefit.
National Polling is irrelevant. There is no national primary.
Kyle Kondrick has the best take right now:
I tend to think there are six real players for the GOP nomination:
Kasich
Bush
Walker
Cruz
Rubio
Carson
Kasich is on the air in New Hampshire – and his stuff is pretty good.
Iowa will decide much. If Walker doesn’t win, then the survivor of Rubio/Bush/Kasich will win the nomination, since that would mean IA was won by one of the nutbags.
One thing to remember: in the past the processes for winnowing went like this:
Do badly in IA
Do badly in NH
Run out of money, get out of the race.
The last part may be far less true in this cycle given the amount of cash everyone will have. If you want to write a dramatic script, write one where either Perry or Cruz stays in the race to lockup the Texas delegation, and a couple others on this list essentially become favorite sons.
The primary process is front loaded because it is thought NH will create a front runner, and the later primaries will be so close in time that they essentially ratify the IA/NH/SC consensus. The danger is that if that consensus does not develop regional appeal might create a brokered convention. This is, of course, every political junkies dream. It is unlikely to happen: but the role of money may create it in a way I don’t think is widely appreciated yet.
Carson is way too wacky and out-there and politically inexperienced to make it through the process. (That’s the Trump vote, and we’re assuming he can’t make it through on similar grounds.)
Kasich, on the other hand, is not nearly crazy enough for the GOP circa 2016.
Cruz is so detested by his own party that he’ll never be able to lock up enough support.
Rubio is a brown person whose signature issue is exactly what the GOP doesn’t want to hear right near.
Bush is married to a brown person, and he’s long been a champion of immigration reform, and the Common Core. These are things the base hates. Plus his brother was the Worst President Ever, and he effectively owns his brother’s administration, politically.
I have a hard time seeing anybody but Walked win this nomination, not because Walker doesn’t have plenty of his own flaws, but simply because he’ll be the Last Man Standing.
Yeah, but Kasich just needs to say a few Crazy Things, and all that ‘moderation’ will be forgiven, no?
And with Bush … they nominated a Mormon. A Mormon who invented Obamneycare.
What do Walker, Kasich, and Rubio offer that Bush doesn’t?
And how much cash does everyone have? Or are we waiting on the Kochs to figure that out?
Walker,Rubio and Kasich do not share a last name with the former President.
In an election defined by anger against the status quo, not having that last name matters.
Has that been polled? I’d bet that it’s a wash between anger at status quo and, as Boo says, “only one guy on this whole list that everyone can imagine being president.”
They’re doing well with big-buck donors to their SuperPacs, but based on the 6/30 FEC filings, their campaign funds and funding bases are weak. Jeb may be able to run an almost exclusively wholesale campaign through SuperTuesday, but the others can’t. Carson is probably running through money the fasted without building a campaign operation. Guess some of us should tackle a review of their burn-rate and what they’re buying and where more money can come from.
You can cut that list in half, because I’ll give Trump better odds than Cruz, Rubio, or especially Carson.
Carson??? Maybe Johnny Carson in his prime. Not Dr Ben.
A one-trick pony whose probably not going to be too impressive having to think on his feet in the debates.
Likely one of the early-fades. Support now vastly overestimated. Typical for summer silly-season polling …
Dr. Ben was actually one of the smoother talking and looking candidates at the GOP Forum last night. He’s as nuts as the others, but smarter than most of them. I don’t have him on my cheatsheet for losing much if any support in the Thursday debate.
Only going by a few press interview clips I’ve seen. Alan Keyes minus the quick, glib tongue. Never been elected to public office that I’m aware, no great business empire to his name. Did once supposedly talk down to Obama at a prayer breakfast.
OK by the party, but rather thin gruel as time goes on and people ask, What else has he done, especially lately? I’ve got him down to 3% support by Halloween.
Only going by a few press interview clips I’ve seen.
There’s your mistake number one. You’re using some internal to you measure of Carson and not in comparison with his competition.
Alan Keyes minus the quick, glib tongue.
Mistake number two. You didn’t mute the sound.
Never been elected to public office that I’m aware, no great business empire to his name.
Mistake number three — too cognitive. No prior electoral win is a negative, but not this early in the election cycle. Even later it’s not a problem if one has political institutional support — which Carson won’t be getting. On standard measures of intelligence, the average, highly regarded pediatric neurosurgeon scores higher than the average successful business person.
If Carson gets rattled on Thursday, he could be down to 3% by September. If he doesn’t, that millenial type fundie support to hold steady for months to come.
Carson’s demeanor may play well. He has actually been off the reservation on a few issues (He is for Civil Unions and legal status for immigrants currently in the US).
Keyes was an in your face blowhard.
Carson is a very different person than Keyes. In an election defined by anger he find ground. It doesn’t hurt that two of his main rivals on the right, Santorum and Huckabee seem intent on blowing themselves up.
He is the longest of long shots.
Oh, I was only speaking to how he might fare on Thursday. No way does Carson get the nomination and I expect he’ll drop out as soon as he’s not needed to make it look like it’s an actual competition.
I’m not sure why you’re dividing this contingent up into the Senators and the Governors. I mean, that has a certain kind of rationality to it, but the GOP Primary voters are anything but rational. In other words, I highly doubt any supporter of Ted Cruz is sitting around thinking, “If my man goes down, I’ll chose Rubio, because he also has Senate experience.” It probably makes more sense to think about them divided by region, or issue, or something else.
Gosh, what possible Rubio trait could have the Republican establishment and Beltway press so enamored with Rubio while he’s simultaneously anathema to a large [hint: and also racist] chunk of the GOP primary base?
[…thinking…thinking…thinking]
In case you haven’t noticed, the guy sitting in the #5 slot (three positions ahead of Rubio) is black.
And a lot of his popularity, like the later years of a famed serial rapist, derives from being condescending towards other black people.
Possible. However, Colin Powell and Condi Rice were popular among GOP voters and I don’t recall either of them doing the “pull up your pants” routine. Can’t even recall Herman Cain (who was a contender in the early going of 2008) doing that. Thus, I’d say that your opinion is far too simplistic.
Oh, sure, I noticed. Actually would have anticipated your objection about Cruz, also Hispanic, before Carson.
Didn’t mean to suggest the racist strain running through GOP politics was the sole factor or operates in a simple, straightforward way. Really, I think (as somebody up-thread kinda suggested, too) it’s the combination of racism wrt Rubio’s own ethnicity with him having made semi-sane comments about immigration policy and reform (wingnut opposition to which is also infused with a strong taint of racism) that keeps the wingnut base’s panties in a twist, and him persona non grata with them.
Cruz is only half Cuban and he doesn’t speak with a slight Spanish accent as Rubio does. But neither of them are doing all that well in the GOP polls.
My take on Rubio is that he looks too young and doesn’t sound mature. While I doubt that a few years and seasoning would improve his limited talent by much, jumping to the head of the line at this time is likely to remove him from contention in the future.
Rubio has very high favorables in both Iowa and New Hampshire, suggesting room for growth.
Honestly, with so many variables here, it seems like almost any scenario is at least possible. And based on years of reading your analyses of these kinds of political duels, I expect that you will likely end up very close to the mark when all is said and done. I would need to mentally dissect your post here several times and put it into an excel spreadsheet with all kinds of conditional formulas, though, in order to properly digest it before Thursday nights circus under the Fox News Big Top.
Any analysis I would attempt to make at this point would be akin to sitting down right now and drawing the pattern of broken glass that will be left on the floor after throwing my shot glass against the wall on Thursday night. It’s very remotely possible I could get close, but it would be a one in a gazillion chance.
Attempting to project their Thursday debate strategies and the public impressions of this one debate is a daunting task. Unless one of the top three in the current polling flops big time on that stage, there’s not likely to be any dramatic changes in the polls as a result of the debate.
Shots? I have four Trump-themed cocktails, including a flaming orange one, along with five drinking games, four for Trump and one for the debate, at the link below. I’d post the whole thing here as a diary, but my probationary period hasn’t expired yet.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2015/08/drinks-and-drinking-games-for-donald.html
People were sweating Romney’s inability to reach the Repubican base, but when push came to shove, he crushed his competition. Bush will do the same. Bush is at even odds to win the nomination on the betting markets and that’s the way it should be.
The next closest is Walker at 4:1 against.
I see no reason why Trump would go anywhere with how easy he’s making this look so far. He seems to be the obvious favorite in New Hampshire and definitely South Carolina. Caucuses like Iowa are a different animal. Last time, first Romney won, but then Santorum won, but then neither won because Ron Paul won and so fuck it, whatever.
Somebody nasty is going to win South Carolina. After the events in Charleston/Columbia, you know the Confederate vote is frothing. Last time Newt Gingrich won by waving the battle flag and calling Obama a welfare president, but then he went to Florida to talk about moon bases and that was the end of the Newt Gingrich Experience.
If JEB! is ever to win, he has to start by winning Florida and then a whole bunch of other places very quickly. Frankly, if he somehow wins he’s Republican Hubert Humphrey. Which is funny, because crooked, money-grubbing, never, ever leaving us Hillary Clinton is Democratic Nixon.
We might be getting all 1968 up in this bitch. 2016 might be one of the least popular or enthusiastic elections in modern history.
You are right. The candidates talk like it is 1968 and not 2015. In 1968 they were talking about medicare, medicaid, and abortion. To date those are still their top issues. That is why they are unable to deal with climate change, ISIS, police killing unarmed Americans, or that maybe next week someone, with a well documented mental illness, will gun down random Americans for reasons we will never understand.
Oh, I forgot the lower tax thing they scream about. They only lower taxes for Corps but not for the middle class. I
“…Hillary Clinton is Democratic Richard Nixon”
I like that analogy. I wonder if she has a secret plan to end the war in the Middle East?
I truly believe that Jeb will be the nominee. And, his entire attitude is like , ‘ I will suffer through this..’
The remark about raising $120 million is very telling.
But, I have come to the conclusion that Shrub is the more talented brother- which is totally frightening.
Sad but true. I’ve been picking the Jebster for about a year.
And despite his surprising stumbling and bumbling so far on some easily anticipated Qs. But stumbling and bumbling and stupid aren’t necessarily disqualifiers in today’s GOP.
Also, with so many potentials and a dubious front-runner with recent-vintage inch-deep support, it looks like the party could be split badly by the end of the primary process, but in semi-panic mode and becoming a national laughing stock, they could decide to rally around the tried and occasionally true Bush name to steady the ship.
That said, if it does end up Jeb, I’m much more confident in Dems’ chances to win big in 2016 than 3 months ago. I too thought he was smarter than his older brother …
Much too will depend on how well the economy is doing a year from now.
Worrying about Republican politics is like waiting for some really ugly person to take a public shit. You can’t ignore the smell because you have to breathe , you tell yourself not to look but you take a little peek anyway but in the end the product is still just a turd, maybe with a ribbon tied with a bow and if you’re lucky with the right advisor, a little flower.
Maybe I’m stupid or just inept at reading poll numbers, but who the people polled in these polls?
Likely voters in November 2016?
Likely GOP voters in the GOP primaries?
Schmoes on the street?
People names Bob or Betty?
I can’t seem to find the sources behind the numbers.
It makes a huge difference obviously. If Trump has 20+% of GOP primary voters then he only has about 20% of the less than 30% of Americans who vote in the GOP primaries. That’s crap but it might get him the nomination.
Mostly GOP registered/likely voters for the primary preference question. Most polls usually include the details in their releases.
Those that vote in primaries/caucuses are a small sub-population of each of the two parties. Those that affiliate with either party that only show up for the general election are satisfied to defer to the decision of primary voters.
Due to the way the Iowa Democratic caucuses are run, it’s difficult to get a number on the participants. In 2008 approximately 116,000 participated in the GOP caucuses. 682,379 showed up in November and voted for McCain/Palin.
NH does better (habit since it started in 1916) from 2008
GOP primary voters: 234,851 GE- GOP: 316,528
DEM primary voters: 265,918 GE – DEM: 384,826
Of the top ten it looks like Rand is out and Rubio is sinking.
They seem to be ranked according to how much noise they’ve been making. I have a friendly bet with a friend that T-rump will survive the night to fight on for freedomjusticeandtheAmericanway(tm) or something.
Don’t gloat when she/he pays up. Otherwise she/he would be reluctant to engage in a future friend bet with you.
So… it’s Bush Clinton in the general election. Can we just skip the next year of breathless coverage and analysis and talk about something else? Like, you know… the fact that Obama is dragging us deeper into the middle east Sunni / Shia war? Or if you have to talk about the election, why not talk about how absolutely nothing will change until 2025 at the earliest? Except, of course, shit will get worse because that is the general trajectory…
And what’s worse — I found out only recently — is the parties, without consulting or notifying me, moved back the beginning of the primary voting in IA to early Feb, a month later than usual. That means six more months of political chattering and speculating from us political junkies before the real stuff begins.
Feb is probably not a bad idea, but even better if all concerned could have agreed to talk about something else until, say, Rod Stewart’s late September.
As for nothing changing until 2025 earliest: not according to the political/social trendlines in this country, which seem to be indicating another civil war a bit before then. Hope I’m wrong of course …
That wouldn’t be Gary Gilmore, would it?