In the boss’s weekly newsletter (sign up here!), released this morning, he revealed the results of the sixth non-scientific straw poll of TWS readers.
Here are the results in an excerpt:
The result I cited in the course of a discussion of Donald Trump was this: He underperforms (so to speak) with TWS poll respondents. Only 15% of you support him for president, and he made it on to only 25% of the ballots in any of the three slots. Yet 63% of you agree that his candidacy has been, on the whole, good for the Republican cause. So at least among TWS readers, while there’s not that much pro-Trump-for-president sentiment, there’s quite a bit of sentiment that he’s played a useful role–presumably in shaking up the race, challenging the establishment and the other candidates, raising certain issues, etc. I think it’s a reasonable position, and one that may extend way beyond TWS readers. It means GOP voters don’t like to see Trump belittled–but they may also ultimately not vote for him for president.
Meanwhile, here are the TWS straw poll ballot results.
For first place:
Marco Rubio 21%
Donald Trump 15%
Ted Cruz 15%
Carly Fiorina 12%
Ben Carson 11%
Scott Walker 9%
John Kasich 7%
Jeb Bush 4%
No one else had more than 1.5% of the first place votes.
And here are the percentage of the ballots on which each candidate is mentioned for first, second or third place:
Carly Fiorina 52%
Marco Rubio 46%
Ben Carson 44%
Ted Cruz 40%
Scott Walker 29%
Donald Trump 25%
John Kasich 20%
Jeb Bush 14%
No one else was mentioned on more than 8% of the ballots.
What to conclude?
1. An Elite Eight seems to have emerged. Someone else could come from far behind, or enter the race late–but at this point it would seem likely one of these eight contenders will be the nominee.
2. Scott Walker, who’s led past TWS straw polls, has had a very bad few weeks. Can he recover?
3. Can John Kasich move ahead of Jeb Bush as the establishment candidate unafraid to make the case for nominating someone with governing experience?
4. Ben Carson has had a well-publicized and impressive move up. But Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz have also been gaining pretty consistently.
5. If you think, as I do, that ultimately neither Trump nor Carson will be nominated, and if you assume no comeback for Walker or Bush, you get a Final Four of Rubio, Fiorina, Cruz and Kasich. Which seems plausible to me.
