How strong a frontrunner is Donald Trump? That depends on how you look at him. The chassis of Trump’s campaign—the rally crowds, the poll numbers, the primary wins—looks like that of a traditional frontrunner. But under the hood he’s running a pure insurgent campaign not unlike what Howard Dean and Pat Buchanan tried to do in previous cycles.
When you look at Trump as an insurgent, his strength is striking. No other insurgent candidate in the modern era has come so close to winning a major-party nomination. But for a moment, look at Trump through the other end of the telescope. As a frontrunner, he is remarkably weak.
You can get a sense of Trump’s relative weakness by comparing him with the two weakest Republican frontrunners in recent times: Bob Dole and Mitt Romney.
In 1996, Bob Dole wasn’t the sexiest candidate. He was a retread who had been in the Senate for more than a quarter-century and had already run for president twice. But the field was lackluster. Lamar Alexander was the (sort of) charismatic fusion candidate; green-eyeshade Phil Gramm was considered a serious contender; Arlen Specter, already on his way to being the most hated man in Washington, was running.
In this ragtag group, Dole was the heavy. He was the prohibitive frontrunner from the start, raising twice as much money during the primaries as his nearest rival. He was enormously popular, with a net favorability rating of plus-54. He even did okay against the popular incumbent president in prospective matchups. Dole held a slight edge over Bill Clinton in general election polls during the invisible primary stage of 1995 and stayed even with him through the start of primary voting in January 1996.
But things went south for Dole as the primaries began. By June, his net favorability had crashed to minus-10. And as the primaries wore on, Dole’s general election numbers dropped. By spring, he was in a double-digit hole, often trailing Clinton by 15 points. The Dole campaign is the perfect illustration of the political maxim “bad gets worse.”
Despite all of that, Dole positively crushed the rest of the Republican field. He won Iowa and came within a point of winning New Hampshire. In the following week he lost two states—Delaware and Arizona—after which he ripped off a string of 15 consecutive victories where he was frequently over the 45 percent mark in a five-candidate field. There was never much of a delegate race because Dole had the nomination wrapped up less than four weeks after the first votes were cast.
In 2012, Mitt Romney was the weak frontrunner. Like Dole, he faced a band of junior-varsity opponents. Like Dole, he locked up the money, raising $86 million through March 2012. (As much as the next three candidates combined. And that number doesn’t count Romney’s super-PAC, which spent more than $40 million during the primaries.)
Never Mr. Popularity, Romney’s favorability numbers were just about even right up until the Iowa caucuses, when negative campaigning took its toll. His net favorable number dropped to minus-10—exactly where Dole’s had been. He was, however, able to climb back to just below parity by Election Day. Republicans worried about Romney’s weaknesses consoled themselves that in trial heats against President Obama, Romney was the strongest in the field. Polling averages put him in about a five-point hole through the winter months; Gallup showed Romney with a slim lead over Obama into April, which eroded during the summer.
And Romney was able to use the primaries to magnify his majorities. Through the first four states, Romney picked up 58 percent of the available delegates. He kept up that pace through the next brace of states and actually increased his delegate share in Arizona and Michigan. On Super Tuesday, he won 55 percent of the delegates up for grabs. Through the first 10 weeks and 17 contests—roughly where we are today—Romney maintained a steady pace, pulling in 53 percent of the total delegates.
Which brings us to Trump. Unlike Dole, who saw his image collapse in the hurly-burly of the race, Trump began his campaign intensely disliked by the general public. With near-universal name recognition, Trump was viewed unfavorably by 68 percent of the country and favorably by only 20 percent. Over the course of the summer he managed a herculean reversal to the point where his net favorability rose to only minus-21. In poll after poll, it has remained locked in that zone since August with an uncanny lack of variance. Trump’s unpopularity is the single most stable metric in the 2016 race.
Gallup has been looking at favorability ratings since 1992 and in January found that “Trump now has a higher unfavorable rating than any candidate at any time during all of these previous election cycles.” So he would be the most disliked general election candidate since pollsters started testing favorability. But what’s interesting is that this number—again, that’s a minus-21—was not Trump’s floor, but his ceiling. Since the other Republicans finally began to go after him towards the end of February, Trump’s favorability mark has sunk to minus-29.
This is why his general election polling is so grim. In the dozens of polls pitting Trump against Hillary Clinton, exactly five of them have shown Trump winning. On average, he has trailed her by about five points. That’s not terrible—it’s a testament to how weak Clinton is as a candidate that Trump can get within hailing distance of her. And Trump is the weakest Republican candidate against Clinton—Rubio, Cruz, and Kasich all beat Clinton on average.
Which brings us to another point of comparison between Trump and Romney/Dole: money. Romney and Dole both dominated the fundraising in their races. Trump has not. He claims to be self-funding, but this is not exactly true: Trump has spent $17 million of his own money on the campaign and has raised another $7.5 million from donors. This puts him far behind Cruz and Rubio and even behind the departed Jeb Bush. (Contrary to Trump’s claim that his quasi-self-funding is revolutionary, in 2008, Mitt Romney spent $17 million on his campaign, too.)
And finally there are the delegates. Unlike Dole, who built momentum, and Romney, who held a steady lead, Trump is actually losing momentum. After the first four states, Trump had a commanding lead, winning 61.6 percent of the available delegates.
The field began to winnow and following two disastrous debates (in which he became the main target of his opponents) Trump won 36 percent of the delegates on Super Tuesday.
On Super Saturday, he slowed further, winning just 34 percent of the available delegates. Trump recovered with wins in Michigan, Mississippi, and Hawaii on March 8. But with his loss in Idaho that same night, he took home only 47 percent of the delegates—meaning he fell further behind the pace needed to win the nomination outright. And this at a time when national polls showed Trump losing altitude for the first time in months and losing, handily, in head-to-head matchups with Ted Cruz.
The trend as this goes to press on March 10 is pretty clear: Where previous frontrunners became stronger as the race progressed, Trump has become weaker.
It may be that none of this matters. Maybe Trump reverses the momentum again. Or maybe he doesn’t even need to, because the dynamics of the race will allow him to capture the nomination without expanding his support. Or maybe his opening position was so strong that no one can catch him even if his momentum continues to wane.
But there’s one other factor at play: By this point in the race, both Dole and Romney had put away their opposition. Trump’s opposition is still congealing around a candidate who is likely to be smart, well-funded, and tough.
And the forces opposing Trump now understand that he is not an unstoppable juggernaut. The question is no longer can he be stopped, but rather, can he be stopped in time.
Jonathan V. Last is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.
