Using polling data from Real Clear Politics, I assemble an index of Republican candidates running as inexperienced outsiders, just like Jimmy Carter did in 1976. It’s a varied lot. It includes Trump, Fiorina and Carson. None of those candidates have day to day experience dealing with legislative bodies or managing civil service institutions. Trump deals with lawyers a lot though. The other two components include Ted Cruz, who counts as an outsider as he is despised by members of his own party in the US Senate and Mike Huckabee.
Huckabee was governor of Arkansas from 1996-2007, ran for President in 2008, and has been involved in the politico-entertainment sphere since at Fox News and in talk radio. Of all the members of this index, he is the only outsider who was once an insider, eight years ago. Hey, there are always borderline cases. I refer doubters to his 2015 book *God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy * which contrasts blue bubbles who live on the coast with red bubbas who live in the flyover states. His terms.
Huckabee is currently polling at 3%, which is fantastic for him as I don’t believe he is running for office: he is refreshing his email list. It’s a lucrative business, in the past he has hooked up with con artists selling alleged biblical cancer cures and the like. But at present at least he doesn’t affect my index too much.
It contains the results of various polls in blue and a 5 poll centered moving average in red. I like the red line. It started near 30% in May, breached 40% in July, 50% in August and 65% in September. It’s now just below 60%. Republicans love their outsiders: qualifications don’t count for much.
Let’s assemble a year 2000 Jimmy Carter outsider index. Jimmy Carter was a qualified outsider. I’m looking mostly for unqualified outsiders or outsiders with self-aggrandizing agendas.
I had thought this was a recent thing, but not so. Here are some picks from the year 2000.
Alan Keyes, Former Ambassador and Conservative Activist (snort)
Steve Forbes. Oh yeah. Steve Forbes. He did well: indeed his tax cut plan inspired GWBush to propose a unsustainable tax cut plan which expired in 2010
Gary Bauer, Former Undersecretary of Education and Conservative Christian Activist
Herman Cain, Former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza.
I don’t count Pat Buchanan as we was pushing an ideology. That I’m familiar with.
In terms of the nationwide popular vote Keyes, Forbes and Bauer scored 6.28% in total. None received any delegates to my knowledge. Amazingly, Wikipedia reports some of the polling from the 2000 GOP primary. Average out the June, August and September 1999 polling for Keyes, Forbes, Bauer and Cain and … well Cain isn’t listed. But the other three work out to 7-8%, depending upon the month.
That’s very manageable. I expect 15% or even 20% at times of all polling to be squirrelly. What we have today is something else entirely. We have solid majorities even when we ignore Rand Paul or Rick Santorum.
One single poll (Dec 2009) gave a peak crank candidate ratio of 15%. Again: manageable. Very much unlike today.
MfM, I think I know what you’re trying to measure here, but could you be explicit? My take is that you’re defining an insider/outsider divide (with judgment calls on the borderline, per your discussion of Huckabee). and measuring the percentage of support going to the outsiders. Is that more or less the case?
Also, an aside about Pat Buchanan: he was a speechwriter in the Nixon White House, and had been a part of the D.C. GOP establishment for most of his years between then and his Presidential run, so I’d say he was an insider positioning himself as an outsider. By now, he’s pretty much an outsider, though. Feel free to do whatever makes sense with him IYHO.
People running as unqualified outsiders is hardly a new thing, as you’ve noticed. What’s different about this year is the level of support they’re getting. Nobody really thought Steve Forbes or Gary Bauer or Alan Keyes were going to really affect the race for the nomination in any meaningful way.
Yes, except a change from 15 to 55 or 65% counts as a shocking increase. We’ve always had crazies, but in the past they have generally polled under 10% individually and even collectively. This is a newish development. (I’m not claiming this is exactly news, but it’s nice to put some numbers on it.)
Newish: At some later point, I’ll look at the 2012 numbers, when political entrepreneurs took a look at Palin’s business model and decided they wanted a piece of the action.
Side question, but pretty germane: does this happen on the Democrat side? Meaning, running a Presidential campaign whose real goal is not winning the Presidency, but elevating the candidate’s visibility for lucrative future endeavors (e.g. lobbying, book or TV show deals, etc.) I don’t think it does. I mean, I imagine Ralph Nader knew he wasn’t really going to be President, but neither does he seem to have parlayed it into Nader and Friends on MSNBC or anything.
I agree wrt to Pat Buchanan, which is why I left him out of the index.
I’ll be a little more explicit, even candid. Hm. Where to start? Without running the numbers, I grouped together the above candidates together last August - I thought they were all preposterous. The best way to understand why is to consider Huckabee. He was a plausible mainstream GOP candidate in 2000, albeit one with heavy evangelical influences. Unlikely but plausible. He’s not running that sort of campaign now. He’s running for reasons other than a) winning the Presidency or b) pushing a particular ideology. The US has had ideological electoral losers like Nader for over a hundred years. Occasionally there will be egotists like Harold Stassen who run more often than they should. But again, category c) as it were tends to poll less than 10%.
More apt than you might think
It later occurred to me that all of my 2016 slate were running as outsiders, as did Jimmy Carter in 1976. Carter lacked Washington experience as well as Washington connections and it showed. He got better over time. But he made some unforced errors. The comparison would be apt if any of the the candidates on my list reached the office of the Presidency, though of course they won’t.
Mathematically, my index is highly likely to approach either 0 or 100%, though of course die hard supporters will probably prevent the attainment of those levels. (If all the candidates on my list drop out before the end then it could hit zero or “Not polled” which I define as the same thing.) So it could be fun to track.
That’s incredibly germain. I’m going to bow out of that tangent for now though while I troubleshoot my framework.
A more accurate term might be “Palin’s Brethren”, though that blurs the serious problems that inexperienced candidates face when they meet the responsibilities in the Oval Office. After all, Palin just barely had the resume for the job, though frankly she lacked the intellectual chops of say George W. Bush. (My bar is not high.) In other words, that term would take us a little bit off the point, even though my 2016 crew is following her business model.
I went back to 2000 to look for a comparable set of candidates - I was surprised to see Herman Cain in the list. Arguably Steve Forbes could be left off of it, as he was in the race to push a point of view. But what he was not doing was trying to build a political organization like Eugene Debs, Ralph Nader or Pat Buchanan. In other words I am highballing my list of comparables somewhat, because I’ll be showing that even then there has been a big change in support for these ridiculous marginals.
Am I missing it? Because as far as I can see, that wasn’t explicit.
What does a this index measure? What are the implications of a high or low index? Does it have some predictive value? As it stands, it just seems you are wanking off with numbers.
Presidential candidates whose prime goal is neither the Office of the Presidency nor building a political organization like for example 3rd party candidates try to do.
A high index implies the GOP base has gone off the rails. A low index implies ordinary politics. An index above 50% implies that the median GOP voter is nuts.
The outsider index is holding steady at 60%, on the basis of the RCP average.
It was called a clown car in 2012, but I only found 2 outsider candidates from the Republican primary that year. They were Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann. I think Santorum was making a serious run, as was Rick Perry. So how did the Bachmann-Cain duo perform?
The moving average of their combined polling had 2 peaks. In July 2011, it poked above 20% when Bachmann had her moment in the sun in Oct 2011 it broke 30% when Herman Cain mania swept the GOP base. This is above the typically less-than-10% levels of 2000, but far below the 60% figure observed today.
Updating, the Outsider Index (5 poll average) is back to 65.2%.
To review the Outsider Index is the sum of Trump, Carson, Cruz, Fiorina and Huckabee. Here I plot it against the Establishment Index, which is the sum of Bush, Rubio, Kasich and Walker. Walker has dropped out, but he had polling numbers that peaked in the mid teens during July 2015.
All was relatively normal until the lines crossed in July. Then the outsiders broke 50% in August. Today the establishment choices are polling under 20%. And by “Establishment”, I mean “Acceptable to the establishment”, and not necessarily their first choice.
It’s still pretty early. But methinks that the folks who gave $100 million+ to Jeb Bush showed questionable judgment.
Not shown in either of these 2 indexes are Rand Paul, Santorum, Graham, Jindal and Pataki. I’m not sure about Santorum’s motives: he might belong on the outsider index. For the others they are either propping a movement (Paul) or they want to win now or in the future even if they are long shots.
The GOP establishment is in a panic. They figured that the Donald would fade: he hasn’t. Now it is November: Chris Cillizza has noted that with holiday season coming up, voter interest will decline and current perceptions may be solidifying, at least until the new year.
So where are we? Conservative analyst Norm Ornstein reported on the Outsider Index in late October: [indent]But here is the most important and enduring fact of the GOP race so far. In every recent national poll of Republicans, including those with likely voters, with or without leaners, the breakdown is that the five main outsider candidates (Trump, Carson, Cruz, Fiorina, Huckabee) combine to generate between 63 and 70 percent support. The three main establishment candidates, Bush, Rubio, and Kasich, combine to between 12 and 19 percent.
Of course, there is a chance that as one or more of the outsider candidates falters, their supporters will gravitate to Rubio or one of the other establishment figures. Or that the outsiders will fragment in support, allowing Rubio, the establishment favorite, to do what Mitt Romney did in 2012. But it is a bit more likely that the bulk of those voters will opt instead for another outsider. [/INDENT]The outsider index has remained flat at 65% since mid October, while establishment polling has hovered around 20%. That’s quite a gap. The establishment’s hope is that Rubio will have crossover appeal. But he’s an empty suit with no legislative accomplishments.
Chart: http://wm40.inbox.com/thumbs/96_130b28_94523bf6_oP.png.thumb
As I see it Carson will collapse on his own: he doesn’t have the organization and he’s basically running a book tour anyway. Trump apparently is building a bit of an organization. He may find himself the target of a massive ad bomb. If he doesn’t, it will show that GOP billionaires have basically stopped caring about anything other than parochial issues like offshore cash holdings or “Corporate tax inversion”. I wonder what the Koch Brothers are thinking. It’s hard to tell, because they only make their views known via misleading political advertisements, and scattered oped pieces.
The Iowa Caucuses are next Monday. Since my last post, the outsiders have only gotten stronger. In my 5 poll moving average, the outsiders are at 69%, while the establishment is polling at 17%. It’s interesting that while the Washington GOP establishment has launched coordinated attacks on Ted Cruz, Donald Trump has yet to receive a serious ad-bomb.
I think the establishment is counting on Trump maxing out short of a majority, which means he doesn’t represent an urgent threat. Cruz, however, can cobble together a majority.
I think that Cruz represents a greater threat to the GOP establishment, mainly because they hate his guts on a personal level. Trump may be an ignorant jackass and utter buffoon, but they figure that at least they can deal with the guy. Cruz would represent maybe 1/3 of the Republican Party and would have no problem giving the other 2/3 the heave-ho.
Also, a failed Trump Presidency could be disavowed. That would be a lot harder with Ted Cruz. It’s easy to imagine a lot of folks bolting from the Republican Party if Cruz was in the Oval Office. The 2018 election could be a wipeout.
Seen in that light, Cruz is basically Trump’s savior. The Party can twist the thumb screws on one leading renegade candidate, but two is a lot harder. Or rather taking out Cruz is prerequisite to stomping on Trump. The problem with this theory though is that I haven’t seen any groundwork laid for a Trump takedown other than these guys. The country needs smarter GOP billionaires.
How did our outsiders do in Iowa? It’s an odd state after all, which doesn’t necessarily track national polling. Heck, local polling isn’t all that great in predicting caucus behavior.
Outsiders won positions 1, 2, 4, 7 and 9. The 9th position candidate (Huckabee) dropped out after the results came in. We’ll see whether being an also-ran helps his email business. Establishment candidates took up the 3rd, 6th and 8th slot. Outsider vote shares totaled to 64.9%, which is a decent fit to national polling. Establishment shares were 27.8%, which is interesting as they’ve been tracking under 20% nationally. The residual was 7.3%.
Sununu of New Hampshire has basically pleaded with his fellow state residents not to pick an outsider: it might interfere with that state’s business model. The outsiders are polling at 52% in the granite state, less than the national average. But still pretty high.
One of the implicit assumptions in the OP is that outsider voters are more likely to have another outsider candidate as their 2nd choice. Perhaps I could test that later.
The professionals at Public Policy Polling provide us with 2nd choice data for the GOP nomination. These results will be noisy as they rely upon a single poll, released on Jan 20. See page 11 of this 85 page document for the raw data:
Oh yeah, and the data is for North Carolina only: I noticed that after I did my analysis. Oops. Consider these opinions to be soft ones.
Anyway, after weighting the 2nd choices of Cruz, Trump, Carson, Fiorina and Huckabee by the Iowa caucus results I found that 48% of the outside vote had other outsiders as a 2nd choice. 18% of them were undecided about their 2nd choice. 34% had a non-outsider as a 2nd choice.
48 > 34
But 48 isn’t overwhelmingly greater than 34. Hefty, sure. Not overwhelming. So voters for outsiders prefer outsiders over other candidates by a hefty margin.
After the Feb 10 New Hampshire primary there was a winnowing: Fiorina and Christie dropped out. Since then there have been 5 polls: their averages are reported beyond the blue line in this chart: http://wm40.inbox.com/thumbs/9c_130b22_8d1834d8_oG.gif.thumb
The outsiders have stayed above 60%. Before Jeb dropped out this evening he thought that he could win if only he could go head to head with Trump. Ditto for Rubio. But I think Outsiders constitute a rough voting bloc. Trump, Cruz and Carson drink from the same well of crazy and it exceeds 50%. They need to be addressed as a unit. Instead, Jeb’s backers spent their ad money tamping down Kasich, Walker and Rubio. Hilarious. I guess they really loved the Iraq War, because they certainly made no plans to distance themselves from it.
