Bush could of course affect things by staying in, if he continues to get votes, just by reducing Rubio’s proportion of the votes to those candidates who clear the threshold.
I agree that if Rubio emerges from NH as the #1 Establishment guy, Bush won’t be pulling many votes away from Rubio. But the thing is, of the three primaries we’re discussing, that ONLY affects SC. Assuming he’s still competitive in NH, until the votes are counted in NH, there’s no reason for Bush supporters to vote for anyone besides Bush.
I’m glad you capitalized ‘IF’ because IMHO it’s a pretty big one. Rubio’s still polling third in Iowa and SC, after all.
The other thing is that for the early primaries, pledged delegates are nice, but there aren’t enough of them to make a big difference in the race. The importance of the first few primaries is how the results, and the public, media, and donor perceptions of the results, affects the subsequent primaries.
Well it was in response to “hard for me to believe a candidate can win the GOP nomination without winning any of IA, NH, and SC.” The point being a consistent second might be even better than winning one and third twice.
Yes the importance is perceptions. And in general on voting day voters shift from those in fourth and below to one of the top three. I see little chance that by Super Tuesday it won’t be for all practical purposes down to a three candidate race. The only way it is not is if one of the current undercard way outperforms expectations (Bush, Kasich, Christie) in NH and gets into third.
I agree with you on that. But I’ll add that at some point, the same thing is going to happen with Trump and Cruz, if consolidation of all the Establishment-lane support gets Rubio into a consistent second place. Trump and Cruz are not going to trade off firsts and thirds for very long. One of them is going to come out of Super Tuesday looking like the real deal, and the other will start to fade.
But this is assuming they trade off firsts and thirds. They can trade off firsts and seconds for quite awhile, because that would mean Rubio spends most of his time in third, and they’re the ones really duking it out for the nomination.
Cruz actually occupies a different space from Trump, so Cruz, Trump, and an establishment choice can all hang in there for quite a while if they are getting delegates.
That’s actually the big problem for the establishment. That anti-Trump voters might just decide they can live with Cruz as an alternative.
True, but there’s a lot of overlap between their two spaces.
And per that PPP poll I mentioned a few days ago, Cruz is far and away the leading second choice of Trump voters. And that was a NH poll, too - a state where Cruz is at his weakest.
Also in NH, with prospective primary voters given a choice between only Cruz and Rubio, Rubio only outpolled Cruz by 42-35, with the rest undecided.
True. But it doesn’t happen very often that three or more candidates keep getting enough delegates to make it worth continuing for all that long into the season.
Maybe it’ll happen this year. But it’s still not the way to bet.
Two new polls of NH (NBC/WJ/Marist and Fox News) and one new poll of Iowa (NBC/etc.) are out.
The two NH polls are so closely in line with the PPP poll from late last week that I’m not going to bother with the numbers, just go to RCP. And they’re all from closely overlapping time periods from last week (1/4-6, 1/4-7, 1/2-7). The only differences worth noting are that (a) Fox has Christie at 5%, instead of 11-12% per the other two, and Fox and NBC have Kasich at 7% and 9%, rather than the 11% that PPP had him at.
RCP also includes a poll from Reach Communications, whoever they are, who say they polled 1000 LV just on 1/7. Seems like a lot of people to be able to contact in one day.
In Iowa, NBC pretty much confirms Fox. Rubio and Bush are both 2-3 points lower, and Cruz, Trump, and Carson are all a point or two higher than Fox, but it’s the same general idea. The interesting trend is that Carson seems to be bouncing back somewhat in Iowa: the last two pre-Christmas polls had him at 6-7%, and Fox and NBC have him at 9% and 11%. My WAG is that now that the spotlight’s no longer on Carson, people are feeling more OK again about supporting him.
Would be kinda sweet if Carson pushed Rubio down to fourth in Iowa. Not that I’m biased or anything.
Main thing from Iowa seems to be that Cruz’ lead over Trump doesn’t seem to be huge, but doesn’t seem to be going away either.
What I hear is that his people are trying to throw one together, but are behind the curve.
On the GOP side, the Iowa caucus isn’t nearly as participatory as on the Dem side. While it isn’t clear to me just how long you have to be present to cast a vote, when the time comes, you’re just casting a vote, rather than doing all the complicated stuff that goes on in the Dem caucuses. So the main thing an organization would do, AFAICT, is help with turnout.
All these polls of New Hampshire that are basically agreeing: What methodology are they using? IIRC, Trump has been doing much better in Internet polls than in ones done by phone (with some but smaller differences for other candidates). If all of these polls are of the same sort, that could be significantly understating or overstating Trump’s position (depending on which sort of poll turns out to be more accurate). On the other hand, if we’re seeing polls with different methodologies still coming to such similar conclusions, that’s something to take seriously.
Because there’s nothing more peaceful and less demanding than an infant, right? Those new moms would have plenty of time to get work accomplished in between breast-feedings and diaper changes.
And if you’re cleaning hotel rooms for a living, or any other hands-on job, I’m sure Kasich will explain how those jobs can be done online.
And just think: this is the most moderate and sane of the GOP candidates. And still a total asshole who is oblivious to the problems most Americans face.
PPP: “80% of participants, selected through a list based sample, responded via the phone, while 20% of respondents who did not have landlines conducted the survey over the internet through an opt-in internet panel.”
Marist (NBC/WSJ): “Adults 18 years of age and older residing in the state of New Hampshire were interviewed in English by telephone using live interviewers. Landline telephone numbers were randomly selected based upon a list of telephone exchanges from throughout the state of New Hampshire from ASDE Survey Sampler, Inc. The exchanges were selected to ensure that each region was represented in proportion to its population. Respondents in the household were randomly selected by first asking for the youngest male. To increase coverage, this land line sample was supplemented by respondents reached through random dialing of cell phone numbersfrom Survey Sampling International.”
Fox: "The poll was conducted by telephone with live interviewers January 4-7, 2016 among a random state sample of 800 likely New Hampshire primary voters. Results based on the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Results for the 386 likely Democratic primary voters have a margin of error of plus or minus 5 points and results for the 414 likely Republican primary voters have a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 points.
“Landline (375) and cellphone (425) numbers were randomly selected from a statewide voter file of registered New Hampshire voters using a probability proportionate to size method. This simply means that phone numbers are proportionally representative to the number of voters in all regions across the state of New Hampshire.”
IOW, except for the 20% of PPP’s sample that didn’t have landlines, the interviews were conducted by live interviewers.
The last two professional women I worked with who took time off for child birth came back to work a lot faster than they would have liked to. I suspect if work from home were an option for them, they’d have jumped at it. This is probably the context in which Kasich made the comment. He didn’t say women need to take less time off or they need to come back to work or be fired. At least I didn’t see that.
And, with that line, Marist has just lost any chance of being taken seriously by me. They don’t think that sex or age will have any correlation with political views? If they really wanted a random sample, they’d ask for something like the member of the household who has the next birthday coming up.
OK, there’s a couple of situations where this might apply under current law.
During the 12 weeks after birth. FMLA guarantees you 12 weeks’ unpaid leave, but some women can’t afford to take it. Paid leave rectifies that problem.
After FMLA’s 12 weeks are up: many (most, I’d bet) employers aren’t going to give the mother any more unpaid leave, even if they’d really like it. Teleworking - for those desk jobs that can be done via telework - would be helpful there.
Kasich clearly said that he was suggesting telework instead of paid maternity leave. I think it’s a great idea as a supplement to paid maternity leave, but that’s not what he’s proposing.
I doubt that your women friends would have jumped at the opportunity to telework instead of having paid leave.
And of course, it does nothing for women who work the majority of jobs that simply can’t be done via telework.
I wouldn’t be surprised if their method produced something closer to a representative sample. Because you’re implicitly assuming that all persons will be equally willing to take the time to talk to a pollster - and that’s not true. Older people are more willing to do so than younger people are, and women are more willing than men. That’s just life in the survey biz.
You love that word “cuck/kuck” but you’re the only one using it and it’s starting to just reflect badly on you, rather than the people you’re directing it at. And I say this as somebody that agrees w/ you.
And that’s exactly why you ask for a specific member of the household, selected in some way independent of any known demographic tendencies. If you ask for the person with the next birthdate and the woman answering the phone says “Well, that’s my husband, but he doesn’t talk to pollsters, I’ll do it instead”, then you respond by saying that it has to be him anyway. If you deviate from that, then you’re allowing your data to be inadvertently contaminated. And if you lead off by asking for the “youngest male”, then you’re deliberately contaminating your data. Does this correct for other forms of inadvertent contamination? Maybe, maybe not: You have no idea.