Tidbits from the Presidential Polls, who is Favored?

It won’t be long now until the first debate of the Presidential primary season with Fox News hosting the Republicans on Thursday, 8/6 in Cleveland. For political junkies, this is the beginning of an extended preseason before the voting begins in early 2016.

For those of you who know me, I am a numbers guy.  I enjoy pouring over statistics, dissecting the minutiae, looking for relevance and bias.  One of the key poll questions during this time in the cycle is whether a respondent has a favorable or unfavorable view of a candidate.  Generally, a high favorability score indicates that a candidate has some room for positive growth and a low favorability score indicates that regression is likely because there’s a smaller pool of potential voters from whom he/she can gain support.  Most people (at least on the GOP side) haven’t decided who they want to vote for yet but you’ve got a better shot if they like you!

These stakes for the results of these polls are particularly relevant now because FOX has decided that only the top 10 candidates (out of the 17 running) will be on the main debate stage next Thursday. The other six or seven will be given the opportunity to participate in a candidate “forum” a few hours before the main event (many have called it the “kiddie table” debate).  In case you didn’t notice, it’s 17 candidates running (not 16). Former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore tossed his hat into the ring this week.  I had to Google him to remind myself who he was; with all humility, if yours truly doesn’t know who you are, you’ve got a long road ahead!

A good website to bookmark would be the blended average of recent polls on Real Clear Politics.  This links to the most recent RCP polling of the GOP field, as of Friday, 7/31, with the average of the 6 most recent national polls.

Wordpress Table Plugin

As you can, the top 8 is fairly well set.  That leaves seven other candidates (Christie, Kasich, Perry, Santorum, Jindal, Fiorina and Graham) to “battle” for the final two spots on the main debate stage.  Christie’s and Perry’s campaigns and super-PACs supporting them are taking that battle to the airwaves, running TV ads on Fox News in an effort to boost their poll numbers just enough to ensure his participation.  Now, this process is a bit unfair because the margin of error of these polls is between 3-to-5% and the margin between the number 10 and 11 candidates is 0.2%, well well within that margin.  Fox has said that they might put 11 candidates on stage if there’s a tie for 10 but it’s unclear what will be defined as a tie.

The two most recent polls (by Quinnipiac and Rasmussen) show Donald Trump gaining momentum, partially at the expense of his favorite punching bag (Jeb Bush), which puts The Donald squarely on top with Scott Walker moving into 2nd place ahead of Bush.

Also notable is that John Kasich (my favorite right now) is creeping up in the polls, getting 5% in the two most recent surveys, which makes it more than likely that he’ll get a spot on the stage.  Not making this debate would be a bit of an embarrassment for the Ohio Governor since it’s taking place in Cleveland.  What’s also good news for Kasich is that he is polling 4th in the last two polls taken in New Hampshire.  It’s a long road but as people see how authentic he is and how qualified he is, he could continue to tick upward.  Kasich, like Trump, tells you what’s on his mind.  One thing that should be an asset, however, might be a vulnerability.  When Kasich talks, he is realistic.  He does not make silly promises that he couldn’t possibly keep (unlike almost all politicians).  But it’s sad to say that a good part of the GOP base of voters would rather hear about building a wall along the entire southern border (and getting Mexico to pay for it) than sensible ideas that actually have a chance of working in a split Congress.

Anyway, this RCP average contains six national polls, two of which were conducted last week (a CNN/ORC poll and a Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey).

In their poll, CNN asked their respondents if they viewed each of the candidates favorably or unfavorably.   But CNN also asked a question (which many polls don’t) about whether the respondent had even heard of the candidate. Needless to say, if somebody doesn’t know who you are you’ve got a problem but there is potential room for growth if you can get your message out.  Being on the main debate stage with Donald Trump would be a good start for some. Anyway, here are some interesting tidbits…

— Donald Trump has virtually 100% name ID, everyone knows who he is.  Of the 1,017 people surveyed, 58% had an unfavorable view of him, 33% favorable, 7% had no opinion and 2% (the ones living on Mars) said they had never heard of him.  Among Republicans, the favorable/unfavorable ratio was 50%-to-41%, better but still troubling.

— 33% of those polled have never heard of Marco Rubio and 42% have never heard of Scott Walker.  11% had never heard of Jeb Bush.  This works more to Rubio’s and Walker’s favor, opinions of Trump and Bush are more “baked into the cake” already.

— CNN/ORC asked the respondents who identified as Republican what they wanted to see regarding Trump in the GOP nominating process:

1. Want him to remain in the GOP primary race (49%)

2. Want him to run for president as an independent (17%)

3. Want him to drop out of the race entirely (34%)

What this means is that 17% of those surveyed do not understand politics at all: an independent bid for president guarantees a President Hillary Clinton.  I would love to see a poll that followed up with that little tidbit to see if 17% would turn to zero.  Ultimately, though, I think these numbers are pretty good news for Trump unless a hefty number of the 49% want him to remain in the race merely for entertainment purposes.

— In a hypothetical election between Hillary and The Donald, Mrs. Clinton wins big: 57%-to-38%.  She also defeats Walker and Bush in these hypothetical matchups but by smaller margins (it should be noted that there were 7% more self-identified Democrats surveyed than Republicans).  Accounting for this, she’s running neck-and-neck with Bush or Walker but still beats Trump handily.  Incidentally, in the Quinnipiac poll released on Friday, Bush was one point ahead of Clinton, Walker one behind and Trump 12 points behind.

The PPP poll did not ask respondents if they had “never heard of” somebody so all of those surveyed who had not heard of a candidate are listed in the “not sure” category but there are some interesting notes regardless.

— PPP asked the favorable/unfavorable question to Republican voters about all 17 candidates (instead of CNN asking for just a handful). Most (including Trump) had higher favorable numbers but a handful had distinctly bad numbers.  Most notable among these is Chris Christie, for whom a whopping 56% of Republicans said they had an unfavorable view of him (only 25% had a favorable one).  This is really bad; the fallout from his “embrace” of Obama during Hurricane Sandy and the BridgeGate controversy have clearly taken a toll.  It would take a remarkable comeback for the New Jersey governor to become a viable candidate.  This may be why his campaign is running national TV ads on FOX to make sure he makes the big boy debate.  His only chance to remain relevant is to knock it out of the park in that debate. Most likely he’s toast.

— Kasich who just entered the race last week, had a 57% “not sure” response on the favorable/unfavorable question which indicates that, as more people get to know him, he has a chance to build a constituency.

As all polls do, PPP listed all of the respondents’ first choice for president (Trump won this one at 19%, with Walker at 17% and Bush at 12%).  What I found particularly interesting in this poll was the breakdown of those preferences.  PPP correlated the favorability ratings of all of the candidates among those who preferred a certain candidate.  So, for instance, we can see what the Trump supporters think of the other 16 options.  This can lead to some nice clues about which candidates might gain support if their first choice falters.

— Jeb Bush will gobble up a lot of Christie’s support if he fades away (he’s got a 63% favorable rating among the big man’s backers).  But Bush is not popular with the more right-wing candidates; 68% of Ted Cruz voters don’t like Bush along with 53% of Trump’s.

— Trump has an unfavorable number of 69% with Bush supporters but his supporters do like Cruz.  The Texas senator has a positive 61%-to-19% ratio among Trump voters and is a likely beneficiary (along with Walker) if The Donald goes away (which is seeming less and less likely).

— Walker is viewed favorably by the supporters of virtually all of the candidates which, along with his neighboring state home-field advantage in the Iowa caucuses is good news for the Wisconsin governor.

— More good news for Walker: he is the 2nd choice of 20% among Trump’s supporters, 20% among Ben Carson’s supporters, 27% of Rubio’s and Kasich’s, 30% of Jindal’s, 32% of Cruz’s and 39% of Perry’s.  This really bodes well for him because several of the above could drop out early in the voting process and, as a lack of votes and/or fundraising kicks candidates out of the field, Walker is poised to be the beneficiary.

Some final general thoughts:

Having looked at these numbers, I stand by my position that Bush and Walker are “co-favorites.”  Walker has more signs in his favor from all of the polling data but Bush will have a huge money advantage.  I like Rubio a lot but he doesn’t look great in the recent numbers; he’ll need some strong debate performances to stay relevant.  I see some hope for Kasich as a long-shot simply because he’s not well known yet and he’s hard not to like when you see what he’s all about.  I can’t find any positive signs for another candidate I like (former HP CEO Carly Fiorina). Hopefully she sticks around awhile, the more people see her the more they will see how good she is.  I fear though that, as long as The Donald remains in the race, her Washington outsider advantage will be Trumped by her better known rival.

Despite his lead in the polls, I still think Trump is a long-shot, although not the 100-to-1 shot I indicated a week ago. The fact that he leads in the polls right now is not a predictor of what will happen next January and February. Rudy Giuliani was way ahead in the polls eight years ago but he couldn’t connect in Iowa or New Hampshire once the retail campaigning begun.  Trump’s current lead is based on his celebrity first and foremost but also because he is channeling the anger that many conservative voters have against the Washington establishment.

Still, for the short-term, if he doesn’t totally blow the debate, Trump may even rise more in the polls.  However, by next January, in the early caucus/primary states in particular (Iowa and New Hampshire), Trump’s celebrity will no longer matter by the time the voting begins because all of the candidates will be known to the electorate.   Remember, his unfavorable ratings put a ceiling on his support, a ceiling he has probably already reached.  Many of the others have much more room to grow as the process evolves.

Thanks for reading!