Super Tuesday post mortem: The GOP

If I haven't admitted it before, I don't put much stock in polls being able to predict races in the primaries. Compared to the general election, where the number of polls is much higher and the predictive value much greater, numbers from primary polls are nearly useless because of two factors, small sample size of polls and a phenomenon I call Voter Churn. By the time November rolls around, the vast majority of people have made up their minds and big swings away from the mean or median polls are damned rare. But in primary season, a lot of people voting only started paying attention a few weeks before and voter loyalty is much lower. For that reason, I'm going to ignore the predictive value of the polls last night and instead look at the averages of the candidates' state averages. I do this because just taking the total votes cast overstates the strength of Ted "The Snake" Cruz due to his big win in the biggest state of Super Tuesday, Texas.  So here is the average of all states with primaries. (I ignore caucus states and so should you, as they are awful predictors of future success.)

Average of state percentages
Trump 36.4%
Cruz 23.6%
Rubio 22.0%
Kasich 9.8% 
Carson 5.9%
Others 2.3%

Here are my top lukewarm takes from these numbers.

1. Kasich can be proud of finally passing Carson before Carson finally quits.  The national polls still had Carson in fourth, and that's only because they poll people who really are paying attention yet.

2. Kasich should hold his head high and fade into oblivion, throwing his support to Rubio. Seriously, I do not understand why he hasn't quit yet. He had his alleged moment in the sun and he didn't get any warmer.

3. Where will the support for Carson go? I honestly have no idea. My guess is it helps Cruz first, Trump second and Rubio third, but this just a guess, and I hate guessing with no real numbers to back me up. It could easily be Trump first and Cruz second.

4. The Republican establishment are buying liquor in bulk. The old schoolers in the GOP hate Cruz more than Trump, but both of them are terrifying to the cocktail party crowd in the nicer suburbs of our dysfunctional capitol. Those two guys got 60% of the total vote and the GOP establishment is now making up its collective mind about which one they hate the least.

5. Cruz is worse for the GOP than Trump. On the East Coast, Cruz got beat like a red-headed stepchild. There are plenty of Republicans who will to use the power of the Senate to block aid to stricken areas, but Cruz does it the most. For a Democrat, running against Cruz is a dream.

6. Rubio isn't looking any better right now. There are a lot more caucuses than primaries over the next week or so, which means more chance for surprises, but in the primaries soon to come, Rubio only looks kinda sorta good in Puerto Rico. Watch Trump make fun of that win if it comes.

Tomorrow: a quick look at the Democrats on Super Tuesday.

The national polls and post mortem from R-SC and D-NV

 The Dems: It's a good time to remind folks reading this blog that the national polls are often meaningless in terms of trends. Hillary won Nevada by 5.5%, which means the "outlier" poll by Gravis Marketing was closest to correct. This either means I have misjudged Gravis or we have a  blind pig/acorn situation.

I'm going to go with the second one. I apologized to Gravis on my Twitter feed last night, but now I'm awake and relatively sober, and I still don't trust them.

The graph shows Hillary leading as she has forever, but the trend looks positive for Sanders. I don't think the trend can be trusted. Clinton's next test is South Carolina next weekend, where she is an overwhelming favorite according to a reasonable number of polls. Then comes Super Tuesday nine days from today. I fully expect Sanders to win some contests on Super Tuesday, but the delegate lead from victories by Clinton will become obvious. Barring a miracle, Sanders' chance to win will evaporate before the first day of Spring.

The GOP: The national trend shows Trump well in the lead but wobbling around in the 35-40% range. I think this is fairly accurate. He won South Carolina handily last night and the next race is the Nevada caucus. Not unlike the situation with the Democrats in Nevada, the number of polls is ridiculously low, but Trump has a comfortable lead.

There are now five people left, but all signs point to a three-person race with a lopsided advantage for Trump. After New Hampshire, Rubio the Robot was supposed to be a discontinued model, but now after South Carolina, he's the "establishment" candidate in the running. This has been a very strange year.

Speaking of strange years, we won't have Jeb:( to kick around anymore. I still can't believe he never caught the Completely Sane and Honest Ben Carson in the weekly national polling average even once, because Carson shows every sign of being a complete non-factor in every upcoming race. Then again, Jeb:( was also a non-factor.

In my evaluation of the Democrats, I've already prepared people for Hillary's inevitability, so am I ready to say the same about Trump? I should be, but honestly, the Republican race is a species I've never seen before, so I can't be sure which way things will jump. I'm getting the strong feeling that nothing that comes out of Trump's mouth can kill him with the Republican base right now, unless he turns 180 degrees from his most popular positions, like admitting there won't be a wall on the Mexican border and he has no way of getting Mexico to pay for it.

So what can kill Trump? Well, I'm not completely sure what happens as Kasich and Carson fade away. I don't think Cruz or Rubio have the talent at campaigning to beat the Teflon Donald, but once again, this is a new species of contest to me, which makes me much less confident to say I know which way the numbers are going.

Let me say this for the record. This isn't the Tea Party anymore. This is the Meth and Heroin Party. (Looking online, that combination is called either Methball or Screwball.) These are the white people who are seeing first hand the worsening situation for white folks in the areas of the country where the economy has gone to shit, who are living with the increasing death rates for middle aged whites noted in the paper by Deaton and Case. It's a mistake to think they are unable to see Trump is just making stuff up as he goes along, it's that they want to believe so bad, they make Mulder look like Scully. They also get a daily dose of news and opinion from talk radio and the Internet that is way more toxic than Fox News, people now considered unfit for TV like Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and Alex Jones. Every time I hear Jones, I am amazed he has an audience and it is terrifying that people running for president would appear on his show. It's harder for me to explain than the popularity of some of the stranger TV and radio preachers like Dr. Gene Scott or Harold Camping.

In short, this is some fucked up shit and I'm trying to make sense of it. By my own standards, I am not succeeding yet.

So February winds down with two contests that appear to have exactly zero drama, and then it's Super Tuesday. This is going to be a crazy amount to data to collect and I'm not even sure of the best way to present it. Stay tuned to see what clever (or not so clever) method I use to make sense of the least sensible election I have ever seen.

The New Hampshire Primary:Warming up the leftovers

My work schedule did not allow me time to discuss the numbers earlier today, but waiting nearly 24 hours after the tabulations has some advantages.

The Democrats: Bernie's win was about the size the polls expected, but folks watching the upcoming primaries suggest that his win was not big enough.  I'm not going to nitpick numbers with these folks, but I do expect some momentum for Sanders after New Hampshire. Hillary has problems of her own, most notably the investigation of the e-mail server stuff, so I certainly can't say it's a lock for either candidate. The national polls on average say Hillary is still the favorite, but the next few weeks will tell how much of a favorite.

The GOP: Let's review some of the stuff I though would be surprises in my preview on Monday.

Trump's margin of victory: Completely in line with what was predicted by the polls when you factor out the none of the above.

No more than a five point spread between second and fifth: Kasich is 5.2% above Rubio, so that's a mild surprise.

Jeb:( in fifth, Christie in sixth: Bush actually caught and passed Rubio, which is a real surprise. The polls after the debate did not give a clue to how much the dissatisfaction with Rubio's debate performance would matter, and I know a lot of people who think this is his doom.  I'm not going there just yet, but a few weeks of sinking polls and bad performances in the rest of the February contests in South Carolina and Nevada should sink him.

Let's also look at some non-surprises that count as news.

Fiorina and Christie call it quits: Christie had promised he would go to South Carolina no matter what happened in New Hampshire, but he's lied before. While neither of them really ever had a chance, they do represent about six points now up for grabs.  I expect that will help the Establishment Trio - Kasich, Jeb:( and Rubio - more than it will help the Nihilist Twins, Trump and Cruz. Carson is only holding on because someone think he can still make money on his book tour by being in the debates.  It should also be noted he is still in fourth place in the national polls, but given his stank performances in Iowa and New Hampshire, that just can't last.

Scrutiny for Kasich: To call Kasich a moderate is to declare words no longer have meanings, but of the Establishment Trio, he's the one that hasn't shown disastrous campaigning skills.  This may only be due to his lack of exposure. It's a given that lack of exposure ends as of yesterday.

There are a lot of factors now, more than I can sort out as a hobbyist. A lot of pundits now think Trump is inevitable. I will reserve judgment on that. A lot of people think Kasich is doomed because he has so little money. That is a very minor problem in the post Citizens United era. All he needs is one billionaire who has had enough with Rubio or Jeb:( and his money problems are a thing of the past. I will say that Trump losing in February in South Carolina or Nevada will be real trouble for his campaign, and my crystal ball is currently on the fritz when trying to look as far ahead as Super Tuesday.

My view is that no one should buy any champagne yet. It's still a long slog and the favorites are nowhere near inevitable yet.

Iowa caucus post-mortem

The Dems: Hillary won! Bernie beat expectations! Bullshit happened at caucus sites!

I am sure at least two of those things are true. The most interesting take I heard from another poll aggregator, Professor Sam Wang of Princeton, is that Bernie needed to win by at least ten to be viable. I'm not sure I agree Iowa has that much effect on the rest of the races, but I respect Wang and we will see how this plays out.

I'd also like to give O'Malley props for dropping out. There are so many hopeless candidates still walking around with no clue that they are dead meat. 

The effect on New Hampshire: Sanders has a big lead and I don't see Clinton spinning this into anything like the kind of positive story she needs to move forward there. South Carolina and Nevada are where she needs to do well.

The GOP: Cruz won! Rubio beat expectations! Trump is an old ugly loser!

I am sure that all of those statements are true. By the way I counted the average of the pools from the last week, only Cruz and Rubio did better than expected - Cruz by about 3 points and Rubio by a remarkable 8 - and everyone else did worse.

For the GOP, winning Iowa is no predictor of getting the nomination or winning the presidency. The guy who did both is George W. Bush in 2000. Reagan lost Iowa in 1980 to George H.W. Bush and Bush lost to Dole in 1988. As for just winning the nomination and not winning the presidency, Dole won in 1996 and Romney tied Santorum (?!) in 2008.

If I'm going to give props to O'Malley, it's only fair I do the same for Huckabee. A concession speech that includes the sentence "the voters are sick of me" get high marks for honesty. He put out a campaign video that used parody lyrics of Adele's Hello and people who disagree with him politically excoriated it, but I'd like to say it was an honest comment on how exhausting it must be to campaign when everything is going nowhere. You are literally out in the cold giving it your all and getting so little back can't be fun.

The effect on New Hampshire: Just like on the Democratic side, I would be surprised if this changes things much. Trump has a big lead and the folks in the Granite State are historically unmoved by the results from Iowa. From my point of view, the big story is who finishes above 10%. The two ways I would spin it are:

1. If New Hampshire isn't a hy-uge win for Trump, somewhere in the neighborhood of a 20% lead over second place, it's a loss. Anyone who gets under 10% in New Hampshire has to considered quitting very seriously.

Next week, we start looking at Nevada and South Carolina. The road show moves on.

Post # 14:Week of Oct. 24 to 30

GOP: Welcome to November! We are thirteen weeks and one day away for actual votes being cast, which is to say the start of this blog is as far away in the past as electoral reality is away in the future.

Once again... my bad.

Not much changed this week. Ben Carson showed the most improvement while the other lines on the graph - Trump in a commanding first place, Marco Rubio is third and Jeb:( all show very modest improvement. Just below the radar, we are seeing signs of Peak Ted Cruz in fifth place, but my view is that it's still way too early.

This clearly isn't 2011. Is it 2007? It always helps to have a baseline comparison, and folks who look at polls are giving up on the idea that 2015-16 looks anything like 2011-12. That year, Romney was the mainstream choice of party leaders and the voters didn't warm up to him at first, if they ever truly did. We had Michele Bachmann winning the Iowa Straw Poll - effectively and mercifully killing this little piece of early bullshit - and after that glitch, the rise and fall of Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum as the erstwhile Not Romneys.

Obviously, we don't have this kind of turnover this year, so folks who look at charts for fun are now wondering if this is more like 2007, when both parties had to get new candidates. Twelve months away from the general, the heirs apparent were Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton, neither of whom made it to the finish line. Maybe that's our baseline model.

If we are looking at a 2007 type race, who should stick around?  The eventual winners were the second place guy on both sides, Barack Obama and John McCain. The Lamestream Media (the best turn of phrase from the right wing this century) were hoping for a horse race and claimed there were a lot of Hillary voters that were deeply pissed and Obama was in trouble, but that was bullshit. It was McCain who wasn't on top of the Crazy Wing, even after he put Crazy Winger Sarah Palin on the ticket.

If we use that model, only Hillary, Sanders, Trump and Carson have a ghost of a chance.

That would say the GOP will nominate someone from The Very Crazy Wing.

When you use the phrase "Crazy Wing", doesn't this show your inherent bias, Professor? No, it does not, you imaginary sea lion.

Many folks to the left of any Republican senator think they are listening to what right wingers hear if they pick a talk show radio host or two and skim through Fox News.

These people are mean well, but they are wrong.

The information the most loyal Republican primary voters are getting is batshit crazy. If it's like 2007, everyone below second place should quit, which means either Trump or Carson will get the nod. My guess at this point is that Carson will not have the stomach for months of scorn and tough questions and Trump will get even worse when he is in second place.

Oddly enough, the guy whose "outsider" bona fides are best is Ted Cruz. His claim to outsider status is that while he is in fact in Washington DC, but everybody hates him. Given the temperature we are getting from the GOP base right now, I think he should definitely stay in.

Other people below his numbers think they must stay in to make sure there particular vision for the party will come to pass.

All of them should walk away. I give the group of Huckabee, Paul, Fiorina, Christie, Gilmore, Graham, Jindal, Santorum, Kasich and Pataki a total sum of 0.0% chance to get the nomination. I think Rubio, Bush and Cruz might climb from the depths. I have no such view for the rest.

Now, let me say I am a liberal, which means I try to deal with reality. In the words of Science Guy Bill Nye, I can be swayed by evidence.

Currently, there is no evidence for the bottom ten GOP candidates. They are all equally dead meat. 

 Non-politicians vs. politicians: Yet again, the non-politicians made gains among the currently decided at the expense of the people who have actually held elected office. Governors have positioned themselves as "Washington outsiders" forever, but they aren't nearly as outside as Trump, Carson or Fiorina. A lot of think pieces are wondering if presidential politics will now be Insider vs. Outsider races instead of Dem vs. GOP.

(A plus point for my side of the aisle. Lawrence Lessig makes some very good points, is an outsider and has exactly fuck all of a chance to win. The left is not as in love with the circus as the right is.)

But simply put, we've handed out the fun-sized Snickers bars to the future socialist kiddies and teh Crazy Wing in the GOP is still with us and still metastasizing.

Maybe the GOP insiders will suck it up, hire someone smarter than they are to make their best candidate palatable and face Hillary or Bernie in the general election.

Maybe. It's possible. I just wouldn't put any money on it unless I was getting a fantastic payoff, at least 5 to 1.

For people who like it in clean numbers, I think it's at least an 83% chance right how that Trump, Carson or Cruz will get the nod, and about 17% for anybody else.
 

The Dems. My original intent was only to track candidates that could stay about None of the Above, but the Democratic race is so quiet, I can easily track Martin O'Malley without having it resemble the messy scramble of the GOP. I made one prediction last week after the multiple dropouts, and that was None of the Above making the big gain. That was so obvious I deserve little credit, but I also said the NotA would slide back down by Thanksgiving, which obviously remains to be seen.

More next week.

Post #13:Week of Oct. 17 to 23

 Dems: This a week of apologies and surprises. I start with the Democrats because more actually relevant things are happening in this race, though as anyone can see it's not much of a race.

Surprise #1 and apology #1. How often do I get to write "The pundits were right and I was wrong"?

Looking back on posts from several blogs going back ten years... this is the first time.

Yes, you guys beat me. I'd quote Han Solo and say "Don't get cocky", but there is no chance in the seven hells the pundits won't be cocky 24/7 about something.

And here is my defeat. All the polls this week are after the debate and the numbers say Hillary won.

I thought Sanders did. In my weak defense, I will not say Sanders lost.  His numbers stayed steady.

Surprises #2 and #3. I didn't think Lincoln Chafee and Jim Webb would throw in their respective towels so quickly. As I tweeted this week, there are five GOP candidates just as dead in the water as these guys, but Jindal, Graham, Pataki, Santorum and Gilmore don't have enough money or sense between them to buy a clue.

Complete non-surprise #1: Biden said no.  He stalled entirely too long, but I never though he would run. The thing is, with three of the also-rans gone, next week will be interesting in a horse race way. My bet would be that None of the Above gets the immediate boost, but it will slide down to where it is now (or lower) by about Thanksgiving.

 GOP: A good week for Trump, slips backward for Carson, Rubio and Jeb... (my new nickname for him; the ellipsis makes you feel as though there must be something else, right?) Cruz is still the King of the Invisibles. 

Free market capitalism in action, sort of: Jeb... got rid of staff and cut the salaries of many who remain, because as free market capitalism tells us, that ALWAYS leads to victory.

I kid... I'm a kidder.

I write that Jeb... did it, but I get the strong feeling that the people who give candidates a LOT of money are now sensibly putting conditions on it. If Jeb... quits, there will be serious cash left over and I'd bet anything it's already decided who gets the rebates and in what percentages.

Apology #2: Let me admit I started this blog too early. I started a similar weekly check of the horse race back in December of 2011. In 2012, meaningful races were held in January. In 2016, both the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire primary will be held in February.
 

 Non-Politicians vs. Politicians: The Fiorina disappearing act continues and Carson slipped a little, but Trump's gains are enough to keep the non-politicians above 60% of the vote of people who aren't undecided.

 The Baskin-Robbins of batshit crazy, part 1: There was a time the conservative media was rightfully called The Echo Chamber, and certain phrases would show up on Fox News and in the columns of conservative writers both in print and online, not to mention talk radio. But now, the vicious fractures in the GOP and the right wing are out in the open for everyone to see.

It's not yet Halloween, but Donald Trump is still scaring the holy shit out of the Republican establishment.  There are so many events that were supposed to be his downfall, and so far... not so much. Trump is no deep thinker and with very few exceptions, he doesn't back down on the crap he says. Using objective reality, he says a whole lot of batshit crazy stuff. He's a birther, an anti-vaxxer, he thinks Mexico will pay for the Great Wall of Trump, which he thinks will work, and he thinks he's an innate, untested military genius.

And here is a snapshot of just how bat-shit crazy the Republicans are. Republican voters trust Trump on foreign policy by more than 2-1 over his closest rival.

In fact, the next three rivals combined equal his total.

And just to add to the batshit crazy, the GOP voters put Hillary in fifth, ahead of Jeb...

This is a party gone mad.
 

The Baskin-Robbins of batshit crazy, part 2: But if we are going to talk "party gone mad", let's look at Ben Carson's positives. A lot of people are noticing how much he loves comparing stuff to Hitler and/or slavery, but that's what his supporters like about him.

All this is before his chat with Chuck Todd today when he said he wants to get rid of Medicare, abortion is equal to slavery and there can be no exceptions and what our country really needs is a way for students to turn in their professors to the authorities, just to make sure the students' First Amendment rights aren't being violated.

I just saw Bridge of Spies, a very good Spielberg film, where Tom Hanks' character, a well-respected lawyer, says that it's the belief in the Constitution that makes us all Americans.

No disrespect to Hanks or the writers Joel and Ethan Coen, but Americans have never agreed on the Constitution really, and in the 21st Century the splits are worse than ever.

As someone who is very keen on objective reality, I have no problem saying the right wing has gone batshit crazy, and it is by no means a march in lock step towards the same batshit crazy.

More data next week.

Post #7:September 5 through 11

The GOP: In terms of the leaders, the news is the Ben Carson surge. Ted Cruz is flirting with getting above the None of the Above numbers, but his support is not rising as much as None of the Above is falling.

But the real news is that someone finally admitted the reality of a hopeless situation and dropped out of the race. Rick Perry and his Wonder Glasses are no longer to be mocked. I found a website that lists campaign contributions and spending, and Perry's numbers were about a million raised and less than half of that spent. (Where does the rest of that go? A weekend in Vegas?) Compare that to Jim Gilmore, who has spent $5,000 and hasn't raised as much money as I spend on a trip to the grocery store. I am completely mystified by his campaign. George Pataki is getting the same level of support in polls - averaging a steady 0.0% - but at least he's raised a quarter of a million and has most of it still on hand.
  

The Dems: Some of the press is latching on to the "Oooh, Hillary's in trouble!" theme, and I'll admit her numbers look like a slow leak. The numbers I'm not showing are Biden's, and I won't show him until he declares. Other than that, nothing really looks like a trend.

Back with more next week.

Post #4:Week of August 15 to 21

GOP: Remember that thing that was going to kill Donald Trump's popularity? There's been about one a week for a while now. None of them have worked. Numbers wobble around, but his general trend is on the upswing. I thought conservative media going against him would put a dent in things, but a lot of talk radio is behind him.

Then there's JeBush Bush. The subtext of a lot of his coverage right now is that he's just not good at campaigning. The Very Serious People said that the Republicans were going to have a real chance with Hispanic voters if they nominated Bush or Rubio, but unless they have found the warehouse where all those Men In Black amnesia sticks are being stored, the party nationally is going to learn the same lesson the California party learned with Pete Wilson.

Here are the categories by popularity.

The Leader: Trump, obvs.

Tier #2: Right now, JeBush Bush and Ben Carson - King of the Jews - are actually above None of the Above. Scott Walker was genuinely in the race for second spot, but he has slipped and is now tied with None of the Above.

Tier #3: Here are the people around 5% to 6%: Rubio, Huckabee, Paul, Cruz and Fiorina. Two weeks ago, Fiorina was getting a lot of buzz, but this week was all buzzkill for her as reporters noticed she was hated by employees, stockholders and the board of Hewlitt-Packard, which is known as The Fiorina Hat Trick.

Tier #4: Three governors, Christie, Kasich and Perry, are around 3%. Kasich could be there because of lack of name recognition. Christie and Perry are there due to too much name recognition. You can stick forks in both of them. If you stick it in the fleshy parts, Christie won't notice. As for Perry, I'm not certain his central nervous system works at all.

The Bargain Basement:  Why in God's name are Santorum, Jindal, Graham, Pataki and Gilmore sticking around? A big explanation is Santorum 2012. He was a no hope candidate, but after Perry and Cain and Gingrich all flamed out, he was the last anti-Mitt Romney.

DEM: The Democratic race is simpler. Hillary has a big lead and Sanders is in second place. I wouldn't put that much stock in her seeming decline and his seeming rise, because we have very few polls compared to the Republican race, only 8 when the GOP has had 24. What we are seeing might just be drift due to a small data set.

The reason the Average of Others is as high as 2.8 is Joe Biden, who might wander over the None of the Above number soon. My position is that he will not be part of the graph until he declares or he passes Sanders. I don't expect either of those events, but time will tell.

We also have The Bargain Basement Democrats. I think Webb, O'Malley and Chafee are hoping some scandal brings Hillary low, but we've seen this story for over twenty years now and it's amazing people thing that e-mail will be her Waterloo.

I'll be back next week. I don't expect much in terms of drama, but you never no. The big tension in my mind is how long the Republican party can be this gleeful about committing suicide.