I’m betting most voters, even Republicans , won’t be watching. And those that don’t will be looking at the sound bites, which Trump will dominate. A lot of Republicans will be relying on talk radio to tell them what to think of it, so “winning” the debate really isn’t the issue. The issue is getting the media to talk about you.
Sorted by votes (89 voters):
Bush 84
Cruz 80
Paul 76
Rubio 73
Walker 70
Huckabee 61
Christie 59
Trump 59
Perry 47
(tie for 10th)
Santorum 36
Carson 36
Graham 27
Jindal 25
Kasich 18
Fiorina 17
Pataki 8
We’re more in alignment with the polls now, though not in the same order.
It’ll be interesting to see if Trump nosedives after the McCain and Graham stuff. Even if he does, we’re getting close enough to the debate that polls with him leading may still be considered.
He’s sixth in the Republican field for total fundraising as of June30th (link). It’s all in the outside groups that support him category that supports him. He needs the inside the campaign money for the stuff those groups can’t spend on.
He’s got a pretty key supporter for the first primary in former NH Senator John Sununu.
I can think of some candidates that wished they had such significant scraps already in hand.
The extent to which you don’t get it is absurd. As long as Trump polls at the top of the field he isn’t a losing candidate in the mind of the public. How you imagine he is a foil for the other GOP candidates is beyond me. They are all too scared of him to challenge him in a meaningful way. No matter what happens, TRUMP GETS THE HEADLINES!
Perry and Graham have tried to lash back but without any measurable benefits yet. They stood up to him when he ripped on McCain, but said little to nothing about his comments about illegal immigrants. Which group does the GOP candidate in 2016 need to win over more, McCain fans or Hispanics? Hmmm? C’mon, even you can figure that one out.
Trump will call people names, interrupt and talk over the others. God only knows how much he will be mugging and making exaggerated faces to keep the attention on himself. What are they going to do, drag him off stage? The man is so convinced of his superiority he doesn’t think the rules apply to him. And even if someone does get off a showstopping zinger that renders Trump speechless (as if that’s even possible) the headline the next day will still be about Trump. Even if he loses he wins!
New poll:
What candidate during the debate first tells Trump, “You’re fired.”?
Ohhh, that’s good! I can hear Graham saying that and having work but there is basically zero chance he makes it on the stage.
Cruz and Huckabee have been careful to kiss up to Trump so I doubt they would consider it. My guess would be either JEB! or Randy.
And Kasich gets to the 3% he needs to get into the first debate in the latest poll. It also puts him at #10 in the RCP average:
Go Kasich!
Fox clarifies there standards to candidates in a memo reported by the [NYT](To qualify for the debate each candidate must place in the top 10 “of an average of the five most recent national polls as recognized by Fox News” by August 4th at 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, according to a memo that Fox News sent to the Republican candidates.)
By that standard there’s still some wiggle room for them on which polls to choose to recognize. If it’s the same five RCP is using to compute their averages Kasich and Perry are tied with 12 days yet to go. The latest poll ended on the day of Kasich’s announcement so at best it’s got a we expect his announcement bump.
RCP averages for positions 9-13
Christie 2.8
Kasich and Perry 1.8
Fiorina and Santorum 1.4
Five names for the last two slots. At the time of he quickening there can be only… er… two.
Kasich is the only one of those likely to rise, since his last poll was 3% and the pre-announcement polls are holding down his average. So he just needs a couple of more polls showing him at 3% or a little better. And he’s getting quite a bit of news coverage, although of course nothing compared to Trump.
I’d agree he’s the only one that’s got a decent chance of a real rise because of an actual change. We shouldn’t read too much in to the other numbers though. The differences between the debate bubble candidates in the individual surveys is smaller than the margin of error. They are statistically insignificant. Otherwise we’d have to be talking about Fiorina’s jump to 4% in the most recent survey (higher than all the other debate bubble candidates!)
Does anyone know the date at which Fox will “calculate” and then announce who makes it on stage?
IIRC, it’s the top 10 most popular of them taken from an average of 10 national polls – I wonder if some of the polls they plan to use have already taken place.
cough post 88 cough 
Re-quoting their memo to the candidates.
And with another 4% showing, Kasich looks like he’ll bump Perry off the stage:
Just after Perry showed some humanity in pointing out that Trump is the second coming of Joe McCarthy. Of course, Perry also showed he is still a dunce, saying that moviegoers should be packing heat. Still, it’s silly that the Republicans are allowing Fox to winnow the field for them.
None of this thread is my concern, but I should like to say Mr. Perry’s idea of preventing violence in cinemas by having many armed has it’s amusing side: nutcase begins blazing away/heroic armed viewers stand up and pull out pieces to shoot back through the no doubt restless and diving crowd as in the rougher saloons of the mining camps of yore.
The thing is even with all of the Jockeying to get on the stage, a debate with 10 candidates is still likely to be a disaster. In a Washington Post OPed it was pointed out that with only 2 hours of debate, and taking into account the time for the moderators to introduce the candidates and ask questions, each candidate is going to have about 10 minutes of answer time, possibly less. With things being that tightly constrained every candidate is going to be pushing for each extra minute they can. This will be especially true of Donald Trump who doesn’t care so much about making a good impression than he does in getting as much attention as possible. I suspect that the majority of the debate is going to involve candidates talking over each other and the moderators trying to get them to follow the rules.
As a result the viewers will probably leave with more of an overall impression of a dysfunctional Republican party than with any greater understanding of any individual candidates views.
There were 8 Democrats on the stage in 2004 and 2008. I don’t think ten is going to be much more of a problem than that, although 16 might have been.
This line of argument seems to be unique to a campaign where the Democrats have only one real candidate.
I’m too lazy to search for it right now, but I was arguing back in 2007 that both parties needed a way of doing some of their winnowing during the year before the primaries, so that you could have a period of time where the race was down to a small number of serious candidates, but before the elimination-by-primary process was fully underway.
And on the Dem side, I specifically felt that there should have been a way to get down to a debate among just Hillary, Obama, and Edwards for a couple of months, and that, yes, eight candidates on the stage was a problem, with the other five getting in the way of people being able to evaluate the three serious candidates.
The way I’d do this is by moving the first four primary/caucus states into the year before the conventions and election. In my perfect world, the Iowa caucuses would have taken place last month, with New Hampshire in September, South Carolina in October, and Nevada in November, with all the other states waiting until 2016.
This way, there would already have been a number of minor candidates who would have tried and failed to gain support in Iowa, and would have thrown in the towel by now. And another few candidates would drop out after NH in September. The voters, not Fox, would do the winnowing.
Former Virginia governor (1998-2002) Jim Gilmore is set to announce his candidacy next week. So does this get him a seat at the kiddie table, or does his late entry and practically nonexistent polling mean he doesn’t even get to share a stage with Santorum, Jindal, Pataki, and the rest of the bottom-tier candidates?
Trump 20%, Walker 13%, Bush 10%, Rubio, Carson, Huck, Paul all 6%, Cruz and Kasich, 5% each, Christie 3%, Perry and Jindal 2% each, everyone else, 1% or less.
Looks like Kasich just gave Perry a firm push towards the kiddie table. **adaher **will be happy. 