Post #16: The second week of November

The GOP: This week, Festivus comes early and I will begin with The Airing of Grievances, foregoing for the time being The Feats of Strength.

I write this blog because I dislike the way numbers are treated by the vast majority of the press. I will readily admit that Nate Silver's website has been a step in the right direction, but it's more like a stutter step, sometimes pushing the numbers harder than they should be pushed, and all too often concerned with nonsense and what looks like product placement. Still, compared to most media, they look good.

That's enough ragging with caveats on Nate Silver for the time being, let's get to the main press.

I have read WAY too many articles calling Ben Carson the front runner. If you look at the big picture, he's been in second place since late August and never in first when you take the averages of polls instead of being dazzled by bright, shiny outliers.

If we look at this week's results, Carson's numbers took their second consecutive week of beatings, which might be explained by his odd statements and his time spent on the defensive, but I have my doubts. This week had only three GOP polls, one of them from the extremely suspicious polling company Rasmussen. On the Republican side, we often have six or more polls, so the data this week is suspect for me both for the quantity and quality of polling.

Rasmussen has stunk the joint out in the general election, always in the bag for the right wing, but in this poll they are suspicious for how little work they were willing to do. Instead of giving numbers for the whole field, they only marked the responses for Trump, Carson, Rubio, Cruz, Bush and Fiorina. While I they are currently the top six, I'm not convinced all the rest of the candidates can be buried quietly yet, especially Mike Huckabee, who I think can speak to the mean yokel Christians in a language even Ted 'The Snake' Cruz hasn't quite mastered.

 

Politicians vs Non-Politicians: It looks like a good week for non-politicians as their numbers tick upwards, but it's really a good week for None of the Above.  If the supposed trend we are seeing for Ben Carson is true, expect the Non-Politician trend to suffer as well as we head towards Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and the Winter Solstice.

(Is there a holiday I'm forgetting in that time period? I forget.)
 

The Democrats: One thing I will say for the Democrats, their poll numbers are easy to read in graph format. It's still Hillary first, Bernie second and then O'Malley WAY behind. In the two weeks since the polling companies stopped asking about Biden, Chafee and Webb, Sanders has seen the biggest point increase as the None of the Above vote has waned. Bernie can last a very long time with cash he has, but the proof of the pudding will be if he can win New Hampshire, which is not a sure bet.

More info next week, assuming the polling companies get off their duffs and give us some numbers.

Post #15: First week of November

The GOP: Well, it finally happened. The press has been harping on the misfortunes of Jeb:( for some time now, while his numbers had been hovering in fourth place, neither gaining or retreating much. The polls this week really beat him up and he slid well below None of the Above and off the chart of this blog for the time being.

It's my view the media just got its teeth into a narrative about Jeb:( in disarray and never let go. I'll admit he sucks at running, but this field is chock full of guys (and gal) who suck at campaigning. The media might pick on him in particular because he has so much money, but what good does the money do right now? There are a few ads running aimed at New Hampshire and Iowa, but it's chump change compared to what December and January will look like.

Overtaking both him and the None of the Above threshold is Ted 'The Snake' Cruz. Cruz's progress is the dotted orange line with the black boxes. I will likely experiment with this to make it even more serpent-like in the next few weeks, Think coral snake or diamondback.

Non-politicians vs. politicians: A bad week for Carson and Trump was mirrored by good weeks for Rubio and Cruz, so the upward trend for the newbies has finally been halted for now. I have no idea if the self-inflicted wounds of Ben Carson will really hurt him with his base or not, but most happened after the last polls of the week, so the results of the next few weeks will be instructive. It's my view that evangelicals have decided in the majority Trump is not one of them, so I think votes Carson loses will go to a politician. Ted Cruz makes the right noises for the right-wing Christians, but I wouldn't be surprised if it also helps the fortunes of Mike Huckabee, who needs all the help he can get.

The Dems: One nice thing about the Democratic chart is that it is easy to read. Sanders made a slight gain, but I can't say that it's necessarily anything but the random wobble we see from week to week. It will be clearer if and when None of the Above gets down to about 10% again.

More news next week.

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 #12: Week of Oct. 10 to 16

 The GOP: You'll remember I marked Peak Trump at the end of August, about six weeks ago. I also noted he was still in first place comfortably.

Well, his stock is rising again.

The correlation isn't perfect, but his bump in the road appears to have been the now cooling carcass of Carly Fiorina. As she rose, she took votes from him and as she falls, his numbers get better.

The press took a closer look at Fiorina and it didn't go well for her. The press is still reticent to look at Trump seriously. He got in bed with the New York mob to build Trump Towers out of concrete instead of the standard steel and glass of the era. Trump University, now defunct, is being investigated as a scam. He's an Obama birther and an anti-vaxx truther, two positions that fly in the face of all serious evidence.

What can take the bloom off this flower growing in the crap? It's very hard to say. As my friend the history teacher says, Trump is the id, and she's not the only one to put it this way. His followers love that he says what they wish they could say, but people who are serious about politics realize his attacks are not ideologically stable. It fascinating that he now attacks JeBush Bush with George W.'s record, blaming him for the attacks on 9/11, which is usually only the claim of far left wing voices, and of invading Iraq using false intelligence, a claim that no serious person outside the GOP can dispute. It's interesting to watch diehard neocons and online conservatives try to take Trump down. The most common insult is calling his "Bill Clinton's friend".

Dudes, I don't think that is going to work.

 Non-Politicians vs. Politicians in the GOP: I've been talking about the share of the people who favor the non-politicians compared to the politicians for a few weeks now, but this week I got the brainstorm to actually show it in a chart.

In early October, Carly Fiorina was a big part of this number, but this week she slipped below Ted Cruz into sixth place. I can't say that this means she will soon be fighting with Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee for whatever scraps the media throw her, but I wasn't impressed with her time in the spotlight, though I fully admit to not being the target market.

I make no claim to knowing when this demonstration of anger ends. The fact the battle for leadership of the House wasn't just a little one weekend show of pique shows us this fire is nowhere near 50% contained.

The Dems: Hillary's numbers are going up, Bernie is staying about level as is None of the Above and the Average of Others is sliding. Clever people will probably figure out the reason.

We reached Peak Biden a few weeks ago.

This week's polls should not be seen as a referendum on the debate just yet. About half the polls were taken before and half after. Next week's polls and the week after will give us a better idea.

Stay tuned.

Post #11:The week of October 3 to 9

 GOP: A confession. My weeks for polling end on Friday, but sometimes a poll gets reported late. Last week on Sunday it looked like nearly everyone we are watching was deflating, but a late poll helped both Trump and Carson. Now Trump is on a two-week surge, though it looks nothing like big August boom.  Can he reach his previous heights? As long as the media focus on him, I can't see him falling farther than second, and I have serious doubts about Ben Carson being able to stand up to the withering scrutiny he is about to get over his incessant comparison of everything to Hitler.

The guy who looked to be in trouble last week was JeBush Bush, but instead the polls were unkind to Carly Fiorina. She is not only below None of the Above, but a little downward pressure and she could sink below Mr. Waiting in the Wings, Ted Cruz.  If that happens, her orange line with the dung colored triangle will disappear.

I have written it before and I write it now again. When Trump and Carson deflate as I think they have to eventually, I see Ted Cruz as the standard bearer for the truly pissed off. No other candidate who holds office embraces the nihilistic wing of the GOP like Cruz, and when votes actually start getting counted next year, I think he will be a force.

Dems: Hillary is up, Bernie is up and that means... Joe Biden is down. The first debate is on Tuesday and Joe won't be there. Some think this will help him, but I am not convinced of this. I think it's much more likely one of the three guys at the bottom end will make a good impression and get a boost, though I can't say which one.

I expect Biden to make a real statement by the end of the month and I expect it to be no. I have no idea what happens then, but I certainly don't think Hillary is inevitable, any more than JeBush Bush is.  We have a long way to go and there are a lot of possibilities.

I mean except for a President named Donald, Benjamin or Carly.  That's just crazy talk.

Back next week with more.

Post #10:The week of September 26 to October 2

 Dems: I always start with the GOP, so I decided to switch up this week. This week, I ask the question "Have we seen peak _____?" Both Clinton and Sanders are at lower numbers than their highest, but I'm not convinced that one or both of them can see higher numbers in the future. It all depends on Joe Biden shitting or getting off the pot.

Back in early September, there were some polls that didn't list Biden as an option, but for about a month now, his name is included in every poll and he is doing well. This week he is at 19.7%, well above None of the Above, but I'm taking him at his word that he hasn't made up his mind and looks more likely to say no than yes. When he is no longer an option, I expect both Clinton and Sanders to get a boost.

GOP:  On the Republican side, the question is "Have we seen Peak Everybody?" Obviously that is impossible, but this week the only candidate we follow who made a gain over last week is Rubio. For the non-politicians, each had a slow leak, but the three of them are still seriously out-polling everyone who has actually held elected office.

Non-politicians: 51.2%
Politicians: 38.2%
None of the Above: 9.6%

I am also announcing that JeBush Bush is now on double secret probation. For the third week in a row he has been below the average for None of the Above, and if that's true next week, he gets his numbers turned off. It really does seem that every time he opens his mouth, things get a little worse. No one below None of the Above is showing anything like a surge, but Ted Cruz is holding steady at around 6%. For the GOP voter in the "I want a jerk, but I'm not sure Trump is the jerk for me" category, I think a lot of them might find Cruz is just who they are looking for.


Back next week with more numbers from both races.