Over the past few months, the boss has conducted an unscientific straw poll to ask newsletter subscribers (subscribe for free!) and TWS blog readers their top three choices for the 2016 GOP nominee. This morning, he sent out the results, and Scott Walker has maintained his lead.
Here’s an excerpt from the newsletter:
First, a caveat: The last newsletter appeared just before Donald Trump got in the race, so he wasn’t on the list of candidates. He nonetheless got a fair number of write-in votes (he ended up with 2% of the first place ballots, and was on 5% of all ballots in first, second or third). I’m sure he would have done far better if he’d been listed. As I suggest in this week’s editorial, while I don’t think he should be the nominee or even come close to being the nominee, I do suspect the political class is under-estimating the potency of his message, and I suspect the other candidates could learn something from what he’s saying.
In any case, in our latest straw poll, Scott Walker continues to hold the first place position he’s had in all four of our surveys. Marco Rubio is now a clear second, and is one of only two candidates to have moved up consistently from poll to poll. The other is Carly Fiorina, who is now sixth in first place votes, but third (!) when you total first, second and third place showings. All the other candidates have more or less bounced around inconclusively, as you can see below. So the bottom line is: Walker remains strong, Rubio continues to move up, and Fiorina is surging.
Here are the results of the four straw polls we’ve done. The first number is the percentage of first place ballots the candidate received, the second is the number of ballots on which the candidate is mentioned for either first, second or third place.
(Rick Santorum, Chris Christie, Lindsey Graham, and George Pataki were all no better than 1 percent in first place ballots or 4 percent in the three top places combined, so I’ve left them –along with Trump– off of the chart.)
On the question of the debates, I asked whether you’d prefer that the first debate be limited to the top ten candidates, determined by an average of national polls at the time, or whether all fifteen or so candidates who hold or have held major elective office, who have some support in national polls, should be randomly divided into two groups for two debates, held back to back the same evening or on adjacent evenings. About 35% of you preferred the first cut-off-at-ten-candidates option, and 65% preferred the more inclusive option of two debates.
I’m with the 65% of you on this. But whatever format is used, here’s a prediction about the debate or debates: The elected officials and most likely nominees–Bush, Walker, Rubio, et al, will be cautious, and, I suspect, un-memorable. Trump, and perhaps Carson or Fiorina, will steal the show, since they’re more likely to be uninhibited and interesting. The GOP establishment insisted on shrinking the number of debates and the number of participants. The unanticipated consequence will be to give individuals whom the establishment doesn’t consider plausible nominees more of a chance to make a big impact. So the debates won’t have the effect of winnowing the field down to plausible nominees–they’ll shake things up more.
Which is fine with me. A little creative chaos never hurt anyone.
