Upcoming Primaries

I thought it would make sense to keep a table for upcoming reference.

Trump has remained #1 but shown no real change in his percentages. Very little chance of capturing nomination before the convention.
Carson is , of course, the biggest upswing so far.
Bush is obviously the biggest downswing so far.

Some of these guys have full time jobs as senators or governors. They've made their statement, so it is time to go back to their day jobs. The underdog debate seemed to be about having a video clip to show in 4 or 8 years.

Candidate	Change #4 minus #1	Debate #4	Debate #3	Debate #2	Debate #1-#2	Debate #1
Trump	+1.4%	24.8%	20.2%	27.8%	24.0%	23.4%
Carson	+18.6%	24.4%	19.8%	14.0%	8.9%	5.8%
Rubio	+6.4%	11.8%	9.7%	5.4%	5.6%	5.4%
Cruz	+4.2%	9.6%	6.9%	7.4%	6.3%	5.4%
Bush	-6.0%	6.0%	8.1%	9.2%	11.5%	12.0%
Fiorina	+1.7%	3.0%	8.1%	4.4%	2.2%	1.3%
Paul	-1.8%	3.0%	3.0%	3.2%	4.7%	4.8%
Kasich	-0.2%	3.0%	3.0%	3.6%	3.2%	3.2%
Walker				5.6%	9.4%	10.2%
Huckabee			3.6%	4.4%	5.6%	6.6%
Christie			3.0%	2.8%	3.1%	3.4%
Total		85.6%	85.4%	87.8%	84.5%	81.5%

Quote: Wizard

I was wondering which candidate to support so I took a test at www.isidewith.com. My results? Bernie Sanders. I side with him on 83% of issues. However, I suspect the web site might be a ploy of the Sanders campaign, based on a Sanders pop-up I got after taking the quiz.

Rand Paul is second on my list and not surprisingly the religious conservatives Carson, Huckabee, and Jim Webb (who is that?) were last.

Hillary Clinton 80%
Bernie Sanders 75%
Rand Paul 73%

I got Hillary, then Sanders. Interestingly, Huckabee was 5th on my list.

Carson was last. I'm apparently more out of sync with him than I thought.

Quote: rxwine

Carson was last. I'm apparently more out of sync with him than I thought.

Maybe you don't keep your grains in your pyramids?

Quote: Wizard

I was wondering which candidate to support so I took a test at www.isidewith.com. My results? Bernie Sanders. I side with him on 83% of issues. However, I suspect the web site might be a ploy of the Sanders campaign, based on a Sanders pop-up I got after taking the quiz.

Rand Paul is second on my list and not surprisingly the religious conservatives Carson, Huckabee, and Jim Webb (who is that?) were last.

Bernie Sanders 93
Clinton 93
Paul 78

Quote: Pacomartin

Trump has remained #1 but shown no real change in his percentages. Very little chance of capturing nomination before the convention.

I disagree. Trump is very steady, when he loses
a follower he picks one up. Carson went up fast,
but can come down fast, he's a clueless dolt when
it comes to running anything.

Most of the online polls have Trump winning the debate,
Carson is 5th or 6th in all of them. It's the first time
Trump has won a debate and it's by a large margin.
He's changing his demeanor, looking more presidential.

http://www.hngn.com/articles/149359/20151111/trump-wins-debate-fourth-gop-presidential-victory-according-web-polls.htm

Quote: Evenbob

I disagree. Trump is very steady, when he loses a follower he picks one up.

Candidate	Predebate #4
Trump	24.8%
Carson	24.4%
Rubio	11.8%
Cruz	9.6%
Bush	6.0%
Total	76.6%

Hypothetically, suppose that the 10 low ranked candidates drop out before the December 15, 2015 Las Vegas, Nevada debate. Could you see Trump polling over 33%? How about 40%?

Quote: Pacomartin

Hypothetically,

Carson is the Herman Cain of 2016.
He'll fade away when they discover
he's totally unqualified for the job.

It is easy to say who won't win the GOP nomination, but who will? It has to be somebody. I'm hesitantly going with Marco Rubio, mainly because I can argue why everybody else won't win.

You have to speculate about which way the votes are headed. My personal belief is that Trump's base has not changed radically with the campaign. The 23.4% that polled for him before the first debate are mostly still there. He loses and gains a few percent, but is not acquiring tens of millions of new fans.

Presumably Rubio and Cruz are picking up fans from the mainline candidates that are dropping, notably Bush and Walker. Ron Paul seems to be losing his father's base.

Candidate	Change #4 minus #1	Debate #4	Debate #3	Debate #2	Debate #1-#2	Debate #1
Trump	+1.4%	24.8%	20.2%	27.8%	24.0%	23.4%
Carson	+18.6%	24.4%	19.8%	14.0%	8.9%	5.8%
Rubio	+6.4%	11.8%	9.7%	5.4%	5.6%	5.4%
Cruz	+4.2%	9.6%	6.9%	7.4%	6.3%	5.4%
Bush	-6.0%	6.0%	8.1%	9.2%	11.5%	12.0%
Fiorina	+1.7%	3.0%	8.1%	4.4%	2.2%	1.3%
Paul	-1.8%	3.0%	3.0%	3.2%	4.7%	4.8%
Kasich	-0.2%	3.0%	3.0%	3.6%	3.2%	3.2%
Walker				5.6%	9.4%	10.2%
Huckabee			3.6%	4.4%	5.6%	6.6%
Christie			3.0%	2.8%	3.1%	3.4%
Total		85.6%	85.4%	87.8%	84.5%	81.5%

Short of a terrible illness or an assassination, I just don't see the Republicans having a candidate when they go into the Convention.

A brokered convention refers to a situation in which no single candidate has secured a pre-existing majority of delegates prior to the first official vote for a political party's presidential candidate at its nominating convention. Through most of the US history brokered conventions were the norm.

Adlai Stevenson (of the 1952 Democratic Party) and Thomas E. Dewey (of the 1948 Republican Party) were the most recent "brokered convention" presidential nominees. The last winning U.S. presidential nominee produced by a brokered convention was Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1932.
1948 Harry S. Truman-303; Thomas E. Dewey-189; Strom Thurmond-39
1952 Dwight D. Eisenhower-442; Adlai Stevenson-89

In 1976, the Republican primaries gave President Gerald Ford a slight lead in the popular vote and delegates entering the Republican National Convention but not enough delegates to secure the nomination.Ford negotiated enough votes to beat Reagan on the first ballot.

You might notice that in all cases of nearly brokered conventions since WWII , the candidate went on to lose the general election. The nearly brokered Democratic candidates lost by large percentages.
1968 Richard Nixon-301; Hubert Humphrey-191; George Wallace-46
1976 Jimmy Carter-297; Gerald Ford-240
1980 Ronald Reagan-489; Jimmy Carter-49
1984 Ronald Reagan-515; Walter Mondale-13
1988 George H. W. Bush-426; Michael Dukakis-111

So the Republicans are very worried about having a candidate on the first round of votes. The presumption is that the candidates will negotiate a winner, possibly by offering the Secretary of State or Vice Presidency to second place candidates.

In the last republican primary Rick Santorum had a plurality of delegates in (6 states) and Ron Paul had a plurality in (4 states). In primaries most states are not willing to concede all their delegates to the person with the highest number of votes. But the Republican party was so scared of the minority candidates, that they passed a rule saying that a state could not choose "winner take all delegates" unless the winner had over 50% of the popular vote.

That decision will probably seriously backfire in this primary. It is interesting that in a primary where the lead candidates are not career politicians, the primary season may end up with the greatest in-party political negotiation in modern history.

Quote: Wizard

I'm hesitantly going with Marco Rubio, mainly because I can argue why everybody else won't win.

If you think that Marco Rubio will win the pre-convention delegate count, I would have to say that probably nobody will win. Rubio may win the negotiations.

During the Democratic convention of 1924, delegates cast their ballots 103 times before a winner was determined. He was slaughtered in the general election!
(Rep)Calvin Coolidge-382; (Dem) John W. Davis-136; (Prog) Robert M. La Follette-13