Kasich low-energy? His detractors are calling him an angry whiner, definitely not a problem with lack of energy.
And comparing him to Huntsman doesn’t make any sense because Kasich clearly one of the more moderate candidates. Huntsman was arguably the most conservative candidate in 2012.
I’m not ruling Cruz out, but I’m wondering what you base this statement on. He’s not ahead in the polls, and he has momentum, but so what? He could easily be peaking too soon. Cruz and Trump haven’t really gone head-to-head yet, and that could change rapidly.
This strikes me as one of those overweighting very recent history type statements, but I’m curious if you’re basing this on something more substantial.
The most recent polls are the best we’ve got.
‘Peaking too soon’ is basically retrospective BS. The only reason why it might be a bad idea for a candidate to see his support increase early rather than late is if he’s got some weakness that will appear once he’s under the sort of scrutiny the leader gets.
Cruz has essentially caught up with Trump in Iowa polling.
Cruz has a real ground game to turn out his supporters. Trump doesn’t, AFAICT.
Cruz is a pretty natural fit for disillusioned Carson supporters. Trump isn’t.
Cruz is this race’s Mr. Conservative. Of all the candidates in the race, he’s the one who would be hardest to attack from the right. That’s a good position to be in as a Republican generally these days, and it’s especially good in Iowa.
Who else? Trump’s support has been holding pretty steady in the mid-20s, at least in non-Internet polling. Carson’s support is falling off. Rubio’s support in Iowa is in the 10-13% range, and has been pretty steady for awhile. So Cruz can lose in one of three ways: Trump’s support in Iowa could surge (seems unlikely), Cruz’ surge could prove to be ephemeral (I doubt it, for reasons 4-6), or Rubio could have an even bigger surge in Iowa than Cruz’. (That could always happen, but I just don’t see it.)
I can’t recall anyone making that argument in 2012. ‘Too moderate’ was the rap on Huntsman.
“Most conservative” doesn’t necessarily mean “farthest out in Rightwingistan”, though. The claim is sustainable if you use an earlier definition from a gentler time.
Ok, this is basically three bullet points: polls, ground game, and ideological fit. Let me know if you think I’m missing something from your argument.
Polls: I’m not sure how much stake I put in polls even at this point, but if you do, they still show Trump leading. I’m not sure where you’re seeing Cruz catch up. Here’s the realclearpolitics summary. Feel free to point me to something more current.
That said, it seems strange that you say ‘peaking too soon’ is BS, and then in the next sentence, explain why it is a real effect. Sure, a strong candidate can peak early and stay high, but most peak, increase scrutiny on themselves (both from the media as well as from opponents), and then fall back to earth. I’m not ready to assume that Cruz will be one of the former rather than the latter.
Ground game: I’m open to considering that this could favor Cruz.
Ideological fit: Again, this could favor Cruz, especially as Trump has taken some positions that are traditionally anathema to conservatives. But so far, many voters who seem like they’d be a good fit for Cruz ideologically are still favoring Trump, presumably because of some combination of the ‘true outsider’ and ‘tough talk’ effects.
This is a pretty good time to survey the field. One man’s opinion:
Pataki, Graham, and Gilore: 0%. The 7-Up candidates. Never had a chance, never will.
Rick Santorum: 0% He dishes out the red meat for the base, and they eat it readily. They just aren’t too fond of him personally. Maybe he’ll hang around after NH for lack of anything else to do.
Rand Paul: 0% The Paris attack couldn’t have come at a worse time for Paul. His isolationist philosophy isn’t entirely without merit, but it isn’t what people want to hear when they’re worried about their safety. Look for him to drop out after NH if not sooner in order to run for his Senate seat. But he’ll be back every four years just as his dad did. If your last name is Paul, you run for president. It’s what you do.
Carly Fiorina: 0% Trump was kind enough to deal her a victim card and she played it, escaping the kids’ table debates. Unfortunately for her, it wasn’t enough for anything but momentary traction. Her signature issue, lying about Planned Parenthood, has done nothing for her except put blood on her hands. Another post-NH dropout.
Mike Huckabee: 0% The Huckster seems to be phoning it in. Sure, he can lie about Planned Parenthood as well as Carly, he can spout anti-abortion and anti-SSM rhetoric to please even the hardest to please conservative, but he actually has some compassion for the poor and this has no place at the table in this party.
John Kasich: 2% If relative sanity counted for anything in today’s GOP, he might have something. Unfortunately for him, it doesn’t. His anti-Trump attacks are music to Democratic ears, but apparently are falling on deaf Republican ears.
Chris Christie: 3% He’s brash and arrogant, two qualities that the base truly loves. But they don’t cotton to palling around with black Kenyan Muslim presidents, His chances of being nominated are significantlyh less than those of him being indicted. His NH humilation will mark his exit and return to his day job of extorting NJ mayors and corrupting the Port Authority.
Ted Cruz: 10% He’s the current unTrump of the month. The base loves him. The establishment loathes him. He might well win Iowa. Big deal, Iowa’s track record sucks ass as a predictor. Maybe hang on till Super Tuesday, then go back to his current job of holding his breath till he turns blue.
Ben Carson: 15% His stock is falling faster than the food reserves inside the pyramids. The Paris attack killed his campaign, which was going to happen when the base awoke from its summer stupor and realized they were backing a black guy. Having a Palinesque grasp of foreign affairs isn’t what you want to have following a foreign crisis. Maybe he can see Canada from his house, but it won’t help.
Marco Rubio: 20% Maybe he should have waited till 2020 when he perhaps would have passed puberty. The Koch blessing should help him, his mannerisms will leave him thirsty for votes. He’ll do respectably well in the first few primaries but eventually be forced as the anti-Trump bloc is split in two by the later primaries.
Jeb Bush: 20% Maybe by 2020 he’ll have figured out his campaign rationale. Sure, running for president is in his blood as much as in Rand Paul’s. But unless he finds a way to consolidate the anti-Trump vote late in the season, he’ll be standing at a lectern trying to keep from vomiting as he endorses Trump.
Donald Trump: 30% He’s gotta be thinking “No matter what I say, these rubes eat it up!” After figuring out that facts are irrelevant to his party’s voters, he’ll claim that Bush piloted the planes as giant drones on 9/11. Or that Rubio is Castro’s bastard son. Who knows? It won’t matter.
In the two most recent polls (the third in RCP is a couple weeks older), Cruz is at 21% and 23%. Trump is at 30% and 25%, but the 30% is CBS/YouGov, an Internet poll. Internet polls have been consistently overstating Trump’s support and usually understating Carson’s support, compared to conventional polls, while having little effect on other candidates. (If you use the HuffPo/Pollster average, you can filter as you like. Watch what happens to the numbers when you filter out Internet polls.) So I’m putting Trump at the 25% the other two most recent polls had him at.
Now the Internet polls could be right, and the conventional polls could be wrong. If so, Trump’s gonna cruise to the nomination, no contest. But if I don’t believe that will happen, then I have to believe the Internet polls are significantly overstating Trump’s support.
No, I’m not explaining why it’s a real effect, because I’m talking about candidates who had weaknesses that all but disqualified them. Almost by definition, these candidates peak too soon, because they should never have peaked at all.
Really, to say they peaked too soon in a meaningful sense, you’d have to come up with a candidate who peaked at just the right time, but whose disqualifying flaws became evident immediately after having snookered the electorate.
Glad we at least tentatively agree on that much.
It’s not the votes they’ve already got, but the votes that they’re gonna get. As Carson’s supporters - a pretty religious bunch, mostly - continue to realize they’ve been snookered, are they going to find more of a home supporting Trump, whose connection with Christianity is ephemeral at best, or Cruz, whose father, a fire-breathing conservative preacher, warms up the crowd for him?
This is where Cruz has a visible upside that Trump lacks. He’s going to get the lion’s share of Carson supporters who become ex-Carson supporters. Some of them will go to Rubio, but more will go to Carson.
In Iowa, Cruz doesn’t need to poach Trump’s supporters. He just has to pick up more Carson supporters than anyone else gets, and turn out his supporters on caucus night. He’ll need Trump’s supporters in April and May, but not in Iowa.
I think you have Carson way too high, and Bush & Trump a bit high, and Cruz too low, with Rubio a bit low. But other than Carson, you’re not that far from my estimates.
I think Carson’s chances of winning the nomination are 0%; his main effect on the race will be how long he holds onto how many supporters, and who wins the supporters he loses.
Trump? I guess it all depends on what one thinks if Internet polls. If they’ve more accurately measured his support, he waltzes to victory. If the conventional polls are more correct (which is how I’d bet), then he’ll miss having a ground game, and he’ll also suffer from not knowing how best to translate votes into delegates in the various primaries. Between these two factors, it’s hard to see him winning the nomination. But it could happen. I’d put his chances more at 10%, though.
Anyhow, my rundown of the odds:
Cruz 45%
Rubio 35%
Trump 10%
Bush 7%
Kasich 3%
The Republican powers that be hate Cruz - not as much as they hate Trump, but Cruz has not exactly been building bridges in the Senate with his grandstanding. The delegates who do not get chosen in primaries are likely to go with Rubio, who is clearly more electable than Cruz. Plus, plenty of primaries are in blue states, which is going to be a plus for Rubio since Republicans there are not quite as radical.
A factor with Trump is if he is going to be able to use the threat of a third party candidacy as leverage. He appears to have put that back in play.
New Hampshire Union Leader has endorsed Chris Christie. The UL is a big deal in NH Republican politics.
Actually the Washington-Wall Street-Silicon Valley axis people were quite enamoured with Huntsman, showering him endorsements and editorials. He failed because the “moderates” in the GOP are Trump/populist moderates not plutocratic moderates.
If anything, liberals have been far harsher on aspects of Kasich’s record then they were with Huntsman.
Exactly, he is a sulky, mopey low-energy candidate.
Explain.
According to RCP his average is 2.7% and other polls I’ve seen place him at 4%.
So in what way is Huntsman the most conservative candidate that Kasich is not?
Huntsman may well have been the most conservative candidate running in 2012, but he was also the least partisan. He’s willing to work with Democrats to get what he considers good. By contrast, Trump, say, has positions that aren’t actually as extreme as most Republicans, on most issues, but he’s not willing to work with anyone.
EDIT: Oh, and Kasich is in a similar position to Huntsman, though probably not as much on either axis. He’s conservative but relatively nonpartisan.
I don’t see that at all – he’s already got the only folks who would ever vote for him. The remainder will completely consolidate for anyone rather than shift to him. He is only the leader because the field is so split.
Cross-posted from this thread:
In the 10 contested Republican primary races since (and including) 1968, the Union Leader has endorsed the N.H. primary winner only four times, and the eventual Republican nominee three times. Astonishingly, it endorsed John Ashbrook in 1972.
Here are today’s odds shown at Predictwise:
Nominee Winner
Clinton 93% 57%
Sanders 6% 2%
OMalley 1% 0%
Biden 0% 0%
-----
Rubio 43% 18%
Trump 22% 9%
Cruz 15% 5%
Bush 12% 5%
Christie 5% 2%
Carson 2% 1%
Huckabee 1% 0%
Kasich 0% 0%
Here are the odds as I call them:
Nominee Winner
Clinton 91% 44%
Sanders 3% 1%
OMalley 1% 0%
Biden 5% 4%
-----
Rubio 45% 26%
Trump 1% 0%
Cruz 23% 9%
Bush 22% 11%
Christie 4% 2%
Carson 0% 0%
Huckabee 1% 0%
Kasich 3% 2%
Romney 1% 1%
Explaining why I give Trump such a low chance:
[ul][li] AFAIK, no major pundits have endorsed him,[/li][li] he has few campaign donors,[/li][li] party leaders don’t want him,[/li][li] other billionaires don’t want him,[/li][li] most voters wouldn’t support him (to get 50% in the general election he’d need at least some Obama voters – what sort of voter would like both Obama and Trump? :smack: )[/li][li] Trump doesn’t even want the nomination. If his plans extended that far he might prefer running as an independent.[/li][/ul]
The astonishing thing is that he has much support at all. Is there even a single Doper() who’s come out preferring a Trump Presidency over every other contender? ( - Some, including myself, are on record as wanting a Trump nomination, but that’s too ensure Democratic victory, not because we want a Trump Presidency.) AFAICT, the high poll numbers he gets may come from cranky citizens thinking “Bugging me about the election this early? I’ll just give them the zaniest answer I can think of … serves 'em right!”
It’s baffling. I’m hardly certain that I’m smarter than Betfair or Predictwise. (If I were I’d be sailing in my yacht, telephoning Wall St.) Has America really gone Through the Looking Glass?
Question is, when does Trump bail out and who does he sway his supporters to? Fiorina? Doubtful. Chris Christie? More likely. 
I still say he’s out by January, announcing his new book.
That’s what I keep hearing, but the PPP poll in the middle of November had him at a 51/37 favorable/unfavorable among Republicans. (See link in the OP.) Not as good as Rubio’s or Cruz’ 55/25 and 55/26, respectively, but it certainly suggests he’s not topped out.
And in that same poll, 10% list him as their second choice, compared to 13% each for Cruz and Rubio.
Maybe the Internet polls that show him at 37% or whatnot have nobody picking him as their second choice, I don’t know. But given that nobody else in those polls is above the low teens, he’s lapping the field if they’re right.
I’m just going, “I don’t think we’re in that reality.” But if we are, he’s all but unstoppable.