Next week, Fox News will decide on the initial GOP presidential field. Further on, the Koch Brothers will make their selection. Super PACs and Dark Money will weigh in also. It should not really be surprising that the least important decision-makers are the actual voters.
Think about it: the first candidate introduction to most voters will be next Thursday’s debate, and it is a media outlet making the decision about who shows up on stage. Not voters. Not the party. Fox News. It says a lot that the party itself has absolved itself from picking candidates. And as for the voters who will eventually make the decision? The ones who get polled? The database that is used to track them is owned by the Koch brothers via a data mining company called i360. Their data is far more detailed and complete than that of the RNC. (Source). After the jump – how the candidates ended up where they are.
As it stands now, Donald Trump will be front and center. Yes really. Fox has said that the person polling highest will have the center position on the stage, flanked by the next candidates with those with the lowest polling scores on the far flanks. In addition, those who don’t make it onto the 9 p.m. (ET) stage will get to debate at 5 ET.
Near him will be Scott Walker and Jeb Bush, and the flanks will be home to Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. The last two positions will be decided by the latest polls, and we don’t know how Fox will pick which polls to use, nor whether they will end up rounding numbers. This is sad since polling has a margin of error, so someone polling at 1% could really be at 4%, and vice versa. There’s a lot of low end clumping. Here are the most recent numbers:
Those people below the cut off line actually move back and forth on a daily basis based on which polls someone is reading. It’s even a different set of numbers if rounding is included.
The big question, of course, is how is The Donald polling so well? There are three very simple reasons.
- There are a lot of Republicans who believe they have been abandoned by their party. These are, in large part, the same people who were Democrats until Reagan when they felt abandoned by the Democratic Party. A lot of white, high school educated, mill and factory workers who saw their jobs disappear in the 1980’s. They blamed the Democrats and the equality the party fought for. They didn’t understand that the problems related to the nascent growth of corporatism over capitalism and the associated globalization and hegemony of large multinationals. Now, they see over the past few months the Supremes ruling in favour of gay marriage, nothing being done about immigration, and no jobs and feel that the Republicans, too, have abandoned them. Trump to the rescue. He crystallizes their anger, sings new platitudes, He emboldens their hopes.
- The Beltway and the MSM say that Trump has no chance, that’s he’s a piker who will soon disappear. The conventional wisdom says he’s unelectable in the general. This makes his fans love him MORE. No joke, the most recent poll on the topic shows that an overwhelming number prefer his views to whether or not he is electable. I am not making this up.
- Finally, these same potential voters believe that Trump is more “like me” than the other candidates. I actually couldn’t have made this up….<Source>
And so kids, get the popcorn ready for next Thursday. The debate will be fun. You can buy a debate kit here from the DNC. Or you can do what we do at the party at my house and see who can win the game by yelling “he’s lying” before anyone else, every time one of them lies.
In the internals to about 7 polls now, when asked what is more important to those GOPers taking the survey: a candidate holding views closer to their views, or electability – by a very large margin, Republicans are saying “a candidate holding views closer to their views”.
I think that gives us a good picture of how very extreme the Republican party has become, at least with it’s base, which is overwhelmingly white, male and over 50.
National polling shows Trump getting creamed by either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, with margins that equal or exceed Reagan’s 1984 (+18.22%) margin over Democratic former V.P. Walter Mondale.
So, I say: let Trump win the nomination…