Wow. Three who’ve never been elected to public office: a reality TV star proud of his business bankruptcies, a surgeon who can’t make up his mind how he feels about vaccines, and a woman called “one of the worst CEOs in history.” And two politicians: a freshman Senator right-wing darling whose main legislative goal is shutting down the U.S. government and ruining its credit rating, and the kid brother of the architect of the foolish and disastrous War against Gog and Magog.
For devout Republicans is this field a dream come true? :rolleyes:
Other than the one CNN/ORC poll, we’ve got Zogby Analytics, Morning Consult, and SurveyMonkey. The latter two aren’t even listed in 538’s pollster ratings, which rates over 300 pollsters, and Zogby is rated, but in the bottom half.
And this is a new and morbidly interesting development.
As much as I agree that polling is questionable and not terribly reliable, it is what is: the field of plausible Republican candidates for actual nomination will be determined by polling. I carry no torch for Scott Walker, save for setting him on fire, but! as a national candidate, he is miles ahead of the Donald. And the result is going to be the the moderate, center-right Republican has no candidate.
I’m thinking that its because they haven’t adapted, they are still in the mindset that, plausibly, believes that all the real action is months away, and so don’t pay that much attention. They aren’t watching cable news, not fingering the pulse of the nation. But the Troglodyte Right is paying attention, and reveling in it! Finding support for their festering opinion that they represent the real American majority, because otherwise…howcum they’re winning?
Are there no more honest moderate conservatives? Who accept the need, the inevitability, of change, but urge caution and prudence? Did they all just get old and die?
No, these days they call themselves Democrats and are happy they’re not lumped in with the reactionaries in the Republican camp.
Your statements that I quoted describe Obama and both Clintons quite well. Back in the early 1990s, Bill Clinton was seen as the new wave of the DNC because he was a Republican who wasn’t in the Conservative Movement; that is, he espoused the kind of “slow, measured change” policy the Republicans had been known for before they went all Southern Strategy/Starve The Beast in the 1970s and 1980s. This was great for the Democrats, as the Great Society was seen as a bust and the New Left had beaten itself to death after the Vietnam War ended and removed the common rallying point.
When the Republicans surged right, the Democrats surged right as well, to fill the vacuum and pick up the votes the Republicans left behind. This left the progressives, the people who want rapid change, as a rump on the left wing of the Democratic party, unable to do much better than Kucinich on the national level.
Now, of course, that’s collapsing, as the reactionary (“Forwards, into the past!”) Tea Party has become the monster the GOP can’t kill or control, as embodied by Trump and his poll numbers. This weakness in the GOP leadership has lead to the last couple GOP primaries becoming clown cars, with various splinters all trying to wrest control of the brand and finding out that they don’t have the money or the votes to do it, such that the GOP settles on, you know, a Romney, or another Bush.
The fact those fundamentally unappealing candidates also have to mouth the insane platitudes of the GOP’s most reactionary elements turns them all McCain 2008: They go from being reasonable candidates for the more conservative voter to picking Palin as a running mate because they need those votes.
Needless to say, this has emboldened the [del]terrorists[/del] more liberal Democrats, which is why Sanders is a strong contender in the DNC primary as opposed to being an also-ran people make chicken jokes about.
If we were to pay attention to all of them, we’d have Trump at 24%, or 33%, or somewhere in between. Fiorina at 6%, or 15%, or somewhere in between. Rubio at 5%, or 11%, or somewhere in between.
Or maybe we ignore the noise, and wait for the signal of more reputable pollsters.
So… you’re unable to discern a consistent pattern in this noise? Because it looks like Trump is clearly leading in the first statistical tier*, Carson is clearly second in the second tier, and Bush, Cruz, Fiorina, and Rubio are clearly in the third tier.
These characters will all be here until at least the fifth primary (I think), while the people consistently scoring less than <5% (fourth tier) will drop, their supporters probably going to third-tier candidates and changing the picture.
*I didn’t do the actual math, just estimating
So yeah, it doesn’t predict what the field will be in April, but it is a useful indicator, not just “noise.”
Hell, that’s what I knew before last week’s debate. How has this group of polls added to my knowledge? Particularly, have they given me any insight into what’s happened as a result of the debate? Is Trump’s support staying steady, or has it taken a big hit? Depends on which poll you look at. Has Fiorina jumped up above the third tier, or not? Ditto. Same question for Rubio, and same answer.
The one new thing I’ve learned from these polls that I didn’t already know a week ago is that Carson’s support has taken a bit of a hit, settling into the low to mid teens. That’s IT. Sure, if I’d known NOTHING before seeing these polls, I’d be better educated now. But that’s a pretty low bar.
Yes, I suppose we could compare the Fox News poll of September 20-22 with that of August 11-13, forty days earlier. But two things:
A lot has happened since then. I suppose we could disregard the results of all the other polling in the interim, but why? We knew Trump’s support had increased a bit between the August 11-13 Fox News poll - you mentioned some of those poll resultsyourself as evidence of greater support for Trump than he had earlier - or now.
Suppose we decide not to reason why, and just do it. Trump had 25% support back in August, based on a sample size of 381, and he has 26% support now, based on a sample size of 398. We’re talking a difference of 1% between the two samples, with a MOE of >5% for each one. This isn’t evidence that Trump’s support has increased between August 11-13 and now.
That should have been “We knew Trump’s support had increased a bit between the August 11-13 Fox News poll and the second debate” - sorry about the omission.
Look, you can’t just go puffing polls one day as evidence of how Trump’s support is increasing, and ignore them later on when it’s inconvenient.
Well, OK, maybe you can. I think that speaks for itself.
Oh, and how about that Quinnipiac poll? Trump’s support increased from 28% on 8/20 to 8/25, to 25% on 9/17 to 9/21. It increased by, uh, -3%. There’s some apples for you.
I’m just using the polls that RCP includes, and ignoring the polls that it ignores. I happen to think that their standards are good ones, because they’re excluding Zogby and SurveyMonkey and Morning Consult, just as I would do on my own, because those pollsters have either poor track records, or negligible track records.
But I’m not including or ignoring any polls because I agree or disagree with the results of those polls. I’m strictly following RCP. If you want to take that as evidence of picking and choosing, I can’t stop you from doing so.
Hell, on Trump, we’re on the same side (if for opposite reasons). I’d like to see him keep doing well in the polls. But unlike you, I can recognize that he had been polling better in the 3-4 weeks preceding the second debate than he has been polling since.
You, OTOH, got all excited about the polls in that period before the second debate because they showed his support increasing, and now you want to ignore them so you can still claim his support is increasing.
The polls before the second debate showed, same poll, from previous period, increasing support. Most polls now are showing, same poll, from previous period, either same or increasing support. You cherrypick the couple of polls that show decreasing support and get “excited” over them.
I am only “excited” about Trump in the sense of the Republican establishment getting a black eye, indigestion and (hopefully) a whopping in the primaries. And his support is, if not increasing, definitely holding steady. In spite of all the “this is the end of Trump” pronouncements after the second debate.
I don’t think Trump will make a very good president. But then, I don’t think Clinton, Sanders, Bush, Rubio, Cruz, Kasich etc. will make a very good president either. I also have this abiding hatred for professional politicians.
And when settling for a mediocre to bad president, I at least prefer someone I don’t hate, and with flair to make it less boring.