Natalie Jackson, writing in the Huffington Post,[1] argues today that “Donald Trump’s lead isn’t as solid as it looks”. What’s the evidence? Rather than focus on which candidate is winning the “horse race”, garnering the most would be voters, Jackson thinks it is more important to look at the percentage of voters who would consider supporting a particular candidate.
The number of potential supporters is important. If, for example, 30% of Republican voters supported Trump, but only 40% would consider supporting Trump, then Trump’s ceiling would be an important factor in the race, since presumably another candidate could consolidate the anti-Trump vote. However, this isn’t at all what the data show. Alternatively, in a national NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released recently, 33% of Republicans supported Trump, and 65% of Republicans could see themselves supporting Trump for the nomination. Trump’s “ceiling” is well above 50%, meaning that a non-Trump presidential candidate would have to win over a sizable number of potential Trump supporters to win the nomination.[2] These numbers would seem to be good for Trump. However, Jackson thinks they bode poorly for him.
Here are the numbers in full.[3]
Jackson points out that by this measure Trump is not actually doing the best; Cruz and Rubio have higher potential support than Trump, and Carson is not far behind. On this metric, Trump is not a singularly dominant candidate, but is instead in the middle of a 4 way popularity contest. Jackson notes that Trump has not once been the candidate with the most number of potential voters. I would add that none of this is particularly surprising. Trump has angered many Republicans for a variety of offenses, from his previous liberal attitudes to his lack of religiosity. Candidates like Cruz, and particularly Rubio, have done far less to make themselves unsupportable. What matters, of course, is not how many people are willing to vote for a candidate but how many actually vote for that candidate. Candidates need to be the first choice, not the third choice, of voters. When polls ask who their first choice is, Trump always leads nationally, and by wide margins.
Jackson argues that Trump’s high support in those questions reflects high name recognition. In her formulation, poll respondents answer with a person whom they know, and, who, we can add to strengthen Jackson’s argument, has been frequently discussed recently in the media. The candidate people actually decide to vote for may be different, and “no one actually knows” what will happen.
A certain skepticism in analyzing polls is needed. Polls can be wrong. Undoubtedly, Jackson is correct that people who currently say they will vote for Trump might not in fact vote for him. But it would be a mistake to discount what the polls tell us. Trump has more support than any of the other candidates, and a majority of Republicans can see themselves supporting his nomination. Trump is not alone in having a majority of voters consider voting for him in the primaries. But he has, at the moment, done a far better job of turning those potential supporters into actual supporters. Cruz, Rubio, and Trump are likely to be the final three candidates in the race, and all of them are well liked enough to gain the support of the majority of the Republican Party. My own take, to be explained in a future post, is that Rubio is more likely to win the nomination than any other candidate. But at the moment, Trump has a big lead in the national polls.[4]
As an addendum, I want to note my own big takeaway from the “Could Support” question, which is that among candidates who participated in the most recent primetime debate, John Kasich is in the worst position, followed by Bush. Even if Kasich were to finish in a strong second place in New Hampshire, he would have trouble gaining momentum nationally. Kasich would need to get the votes of people who currently could not see themselves supporting him, as 55% say they could not see themselves supporting him. He would need to do this from a position of having only 28% of Republicans already willing to vote for him. Jeb Bush similarly has a majority of Republicans unwilling to vote for him, although he at least has a substantial minority of 42% willing to back him. Marco Rubio is uniquely well positioned to take advantage of any momentum coming out of New Hampshire, where the establishment campaigns have focused their resources. Chris Christie’s position is inferior to Rubio’s but better than Kasich’s and Bush’s.
[1]
Here is a link to the article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-lead-challengers_us_569fa289e4b0875553c26a3c?te=ThinkProgress
[2] This
assumes at least semi-democratic processes in the nominating process. A nominee
could in fact be chosen without gaining a plurality or majority of votes.
[3] The
data come from the NBC/WSJ poll as compiled by the Huffington Post. The chart
was made in Excel.
[4]
There are reasons to be skeptical of the impact this will have. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/polls-suggest-trump-will-win-between-8-percent-and-64-percent-of-the-vote/
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