REPUBLICANS
Once again, the interesting action this week has all been on the GOP side. I mean, Donald Trump had hovered around the 30 percent mark for several months, seemingly maxing out his support. But hey, say a few nasty things about brown people, and woosh! To infinity, and beyond!
Indeed, Trump is now close to the 40s, with a composite score of 38.1 percent, compared to 35.1 percent last week. He is well on his way to becoming the undisputed preference of the crazy GOP, and with opposition split between the establishment wing (a combined 25 percent) and Christian right wing (another 25 percent), there is little hope for unified opposition. This race is now Trump’s to lose. And as we’ve seen, there’s absolutely nothing he could do or say that wouldn’t improve his numbers. He could punch zombie Reagan in the face, and it would be good for another five points.
Ben Carson is still kaput. Marco Rubio’s boomlet is finished. Ted Cruz is now the most legit anti-Trump, and 1) he’s still about 25 points behind, and 2) the establishment hates him too. This is fun!
So let’s take a look at the polling behind those trendlines:
|
TRUMP |
CRUZ |
RUBIO |
CARSON |
Morning Consult |
12/11-15 |
40 |
9 |
7 |
10 |
12/3-7 |
41 |
7 |
10 |
12 |
ABC/WaPo |
12/10-13 |
38 |
15 |
12 |
12 |
11/16-19 |
32 |
8 |
11 |
22 |
Monmouth U |
12/10-13 |
41 |
14 |
10 |
9 |
10/15-18 |
28 |
10 |
6 |
18 |
NBC/WSJ |
12/6-9 |
27 |
22 |
15 |
11 |
10/25-29 |
23 |
10 |
11 |
29 |
Who are the dumbasses who are still sticking with Carson?
So not much of a contest at the national level. But Iowa is actually making things interesting:
That’s Ted Cruz taking the lead, even if just by a sliver. I know it’s hard to see, but in short, Cruz is picking up Carson’s collapsing fundie support.
|
CRUZ |
TRUMP |
RUBIO |
CARSON |
PPP |
12/10-13 |
25 |
28 |
14 |
10 |
10/30-11/1 |
14 |
22 |
10 |
21 |
Quinnipiac |
12/4-13 |
27 |
28 |
14 |
10 |
11/16-22 |
23 |
25 |
13 |
18 |
FOX |
12/7-10 |
28 |
26 |
13 |
10 |
n/a |
- |
- |
- |
- |
Selzer |
12/7-10 |
31 |
21 |
10 |
13 |
10/16-19 |
10 |
19 |
9 |
28 |
Anne Selzer has the best track record in polling today. Her Iowa polls are scary accurate, the gold standard. So if she says Cruz is up 10 on Trump, then Cruz is up 10 on Trump. But overall, we can see clearly that while Trump has eked out small gains from late October and November, it is Cruz who has benefited most from Carson’s dramatic collapse.
Lucky for Trump, Iowa is followed by New Hampshire, a state much less hospitable to fundamentalist conservatives.
Still, not much in the way of new polling, just one since last week:
|
TRUMP |
CRUZ |
RUBIO |
CHRISTIE |
MassINC/WBUR |
12/6-8 |
27 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
11/14-15 |
23 |
8 |
13 |
6 |
Look at that, CHRISTIE making an appearance! Good for him!
If the voting was actually underway now, Cruz would win Iowa and get a delegate or two more than second-place finisher Trump. But as Rick Santorum (2012) and Mike Huckabee (2008) found out, winning Iowa doesn’t get you too far. And the more fundamentalist Iowa’s GOP becomes, the more irrelevant that caucus becomes.
It may not be just the Democrats that need to dump Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status. When a state becomes that unrepresentative, it’s probably time to find an alternative process.
DEMOCRATS
Good news for Bernie Sanders’ supporters: Hillary Clinton is down from last week! 54.6 percent compared to 55.0 percent. Bad news is that so is Sanders—29.5 percent, down from 30.2 percent.
In reality, that is all just float. Nothing enough is happening on the Democratic side to shake up the race, so Clinton remains in the mid 50s, and Sanders remains at that 30 percent demographic ceiling, with yet another week marked off the calendar. And that’s where he’ll stay unless he can start making inroads into non-Anglo demographics. But how can he do that if he’s spending his time in lily-white Iowa and New Hampshire?
See? This is a way that having those two states go first hurts Democrats. Imagine if Sanders was spending half his time in South Carolina talking to black voters? It might be an entirely different ballgame. Or if he was in Arizona talking to Latinos. And no, I don’t mean the odd visit, I mean camping out in those states the way everyone is camped out in Iowa and New Hampshire at the moment.
But voters in Iowa and New Hampshire certainly don’t want or need to talk about Black Lives Matter or immigration, because those aren’t issues of particular local importance. It forces our candidates to cater to a demographic that is non-representative
This needs to be the last year in which Iowa and New Hampshire have predominant relevance in the Democratic primary process. We need to lead with states that reflect the people of our party. Because right now, no one is being served by the current system.
Speaking of our current system … Iowa:
That’s a 53.1 to 36.1 percent Clinton lead. A week ago, it was 53.0 to 35.9. I’m telling you, not much happens these holiday months. At least not in a race without a crazy fucker like Trump in it. Iowa did see a bunch of new polls this past week:
|
CLINTON |
SANDERS |
PPP |
12/10-13 |
52 |
34 |
10/30-11/1 |
57 |
25 |
QUINNIPIAC |
12/4-13 |
51 |
40 |
11/16-22 |
51 |
42 |
FOX |
12/7-10 |
50 |
36 |
n/a |
- |
- |
SELZER |
12/7-10 |
48 |
39 |
10/16-19 |
48 |
41 |
Again, the one poll of this lot that matters to me is Selzer’s, and she’s showing a very static race. Still, Clinton under 50 and Sanders within single digits is not a hopeless deficit. PPP looks a little outlier-ish with an 18-point deficit, but generally speaking everyone is in the same general ballpark. Iowa is still potentially competitive.
Nothing new this week on the Democratic side out of New Hampshire, where Sanders maintains the same 45.4 to 43.9 percent lead.
I fully expect polling to be quite dead the rest of the year, so this is likely the last polling round-up edition of 2015. If I’m wrong, I’ll put something together the week before the New Year, but if not, expect a metric shit-ton of new polling the first week of January, so we’ll have a chance then to calibrate a new baseline heading directly into primary season. Exciting!