The Race for the GOP Nomination - Post-Thanksgiving Thread

Politics & Elections
501

People - at least, people whose jobs and lives don’t put a daily toll on their bodies - are living longer and staying healthy longer than they were 35 years ago. Trump’s 68, and 68 just isn’t as old as it used to be.

Seriously, what would make you think that?

I would have to disagree. Hillary can spot Bernie Iowa and New Hampshire, and she’s still solidly in the lead in terms of her prospects for winning. He’s got to win both just to have a chance; a split and he’s dead.

With Trump, it’s still not clear whether he’ll win Iowa, and what the effect would be on his NH support if he doesn’t. I’d still want odds in a bet on Trump; I’d be willing to give odds in a bet on Hillary.

If he wins in his Wookie season, he’d be Wookie of the Year for sure! :smiley:

502

Yeah I have been wondering about that too. I was watching some old videos of Trump like this oneon Oprah in 1988. His argument about America being beaten is uncannily familiar but he is so much more fluent and articulate than he is today. The 1988 Trump would be a much better candidate than the 2016 one.

503

Trump Clinton and Sanders are all pretty much contemporaries. Clinton is 8 months younger and Sanders 4 and a half years older.

I do not think age will be much of an issue.

504

Santorum, who’s younger but barely registering in the polls, admits he might be packing it in soon: Rick Santorum admits his campaign may be coming to a close

505

No . . . no . . . must resist . . .

506

I can’t imagine **EH **did that by accident. It’s just too too perfect.

507

Is that some sort of sniggering insult to Packers fans? Rather risky, as several of them can read.

508

Heheheheh.

509

Just in case you honestly don’t get that truly masterful joke, read this Campaign for the neologism "santorum" - Wikipedia and get back to us. :smiley:

510

Kasich is endorsed by the Boston Globe, Christie by the Boston Herald:

511

That and 5 bucks will get you coffee at Starbucks.

512

I would prefer to maintain my unblemished record of never giving Starbucks a fucking dime.

513

Jim Geraghty of National Review finds that the GOP polling might be worthless, since it projects turnout three times the record set in 2008.

While I’m obviously hesitant to shout “skewed polls!”, wouldn’t that kind of GOP turnout also translate to the general election?

514

If the Republicans who are totally about Trump are disappointed when Kasich romps to victory, crushing all resistance…they will blame “the Establishment”. Cruz fanatics slimed by The Donald likely will do the same thing. Or not, speculating on their “reasoning” seems a dicey proposition.

(Post lengthened to be needlessly annoying.)

515

I think your seeing the common mistake of "journalists trying to do math’. Is it not hard to realize that the kind of people that answer political polls have a higher “likely to caucus” value than the population as a whole?

From what I can Ruffini (who Geraghty cites) took the US adult population, divided it by the number of samples in poll (1002) and multiplied it by the number of registered voters that reported as Republican or leaning Republican (405). Clearly that is nonsense.

As a sanity check, here is a poll from 2008 around this time also from CNN: “The poll surveyed 1,192 adults. Of 974 registered voters, 500 described themselves as Democrats and 412 identified themselves as Republicans.”

One might note that 500/1192 = 41.9% while 405/1002 = 40.4%

IMO, nothing to see here.

516

Thank goodness I learned long ago not to drink liquids while reading your posts. But come on, THREE TIMES the turnout in the general election? Seems quite a bit excessive to me. Republicans are notoriously reliable voters, I just can’t see triple their number voting no matter how high the excitement. In fact, I think what’s left of the moderate Republicans will either stay home, vote for Hillary, or waste a vote on a third party.

517

Jim Geraghty of National Review clearly has the brains of a turnip.

First of all, the point of the likely-voter screen isn’t to estimate the number of likely voters. (If you’ve been making a living as a political pundit for years, and haven’t figured that out, I want your fucking job. What a fine life it must be, to be a member of a well-paying profession where ignorance is no hindrance to success. But I digress.)

Its purpose is to weed out a bunch of unlikely voters, thereby making the remaining sample more representative of those who will actually show up next Monday night.

Second, if Geraghty thought that having three times as many ‘likely voters’ in the sample as there ought to be was skewing the poll results, the obvious way to check this would be to look at the results of similar polls in 2012. Did they get the number of likely voters right, or were they also off by some large multiple? If the latter, was the poll in the right ballpark in terms of candidate vote share, or not?

This really isn’t hard. Unless you want to spout off about something without doing the ten minutes of Googling it might take to see if what you’re saying makes any sense at all.

518

New York Times has endorsed Kasich. I’m sure that has no impact in Iowa, but would it have any impact in New Hampshire?

519

Probably a bit less of an impact than whatever comes out of Iowa.

And the Iowa Oracle has weighed in: Selzer & Co. has Trump 28, Cruz 23, Rubio 15, Carson 10, Paul 5, and everyone else 3 or less.

This poll was taken January 26-29, so that only included one day of post-debate polling. Sample of 602 likely GOP caucus voters, MOE +/- 4%.

Upsides and downsides: 71% of Trump’s supporters say their minds are made up, v. 61% for Cruz and 47% for Rubio. But Trump was the second choice of only 7%, v. 17% for Cruz and 20% for Rubio.

Trump’s and Rubio’s support have both been increasing over the past several weeks: in mid-December, Selzer had Trump’s support at 21% and Rubio’s at 10%. But the number of people considering Rubio for their second choice has grown, while the same number for Trump has shrunk: in December, he’d been the first choice of 21% and the second choice of 14%; now it’s 28 and 7, which suggests that he’s firming up his support among voters who’d been considering him, but not widening his potential base.

So Trump’s support in Iowa really is what it is at this point; the only question about it is the perpetual ‘will his supporters turn out’ question. While Rubio’s support could still go a ways in either direction: he’s the second choice of a lot of people, but his support is soft even among those who have him as their first choice. And Cruz is somewhere in between.

And of course Cruz is the only one of the top 3 whose support has been decreasing, down from 31% in December.

Carson seems to have arrested his slide. He won’t win, but he’ll probably still get 9-10% of the vote.

Other than Rubio, none of the ‘Establishment lane’ candidates appears to have any prospects of getting a bounce out of Iowa to help them in NH. Rand might, though.

And of course, Monday night will be the end of the line for Huckabee and Santorum, whose hopes are on an Iowa miracle that won’t happen.

520

Will it also be the end of the line for O’Malley?