First apologies for the headline. Got carried away with the alliterative allure, I guess.

I have managed to lose one very expensive chocolate bar to a friend who is not a political professional through my cocksure belief in the imminent fall of the Donald. That was last August and I my losses could have been infinitely greater but thankfully my friend is not a gambling man and wanted to keep it a friendly bet. Good thing, as I was prepared to wager any amount he was willing to put up that, come August 31, Trump would be flailing away in the basement of the polls.

Just about every election year someone trots out psychological research on the real reasons voters vote the way they do and what they look for in the presidential candidates they end up supporting. Well, it’s time to trot them out again because they explain in part the Donald phenomenon. The first study is one initially conducted in 1986 by Donald Kinder which showed that there are four basic qualities that voters use to evaluate presidential candidates: perceived leadership, competence, integrity and empathy.Read More »

Josh Voorhees of Slate a few days ago contemplated the possibility of Bernie Sanders, with his rising poll numbers, winning both Iowa and New Hampshire and the effect that would have on the race for the Democratic nomination. I was going to post a rebuttal to his assertion that it would fundamentally alter the race. But Steve Benin on Rachel Maddow’s blog beat me to it.

Bottom line: Even with Iowa and New Hampshire in his pocket, it’s still an uphill battle for Bernie the rest of the way. Not a lot of recent polling, but what’s there suggests he’s still pretty far behind in South Carolina and Nevada, the next two primaries.  Super Tuesday is next after those two and out of the crop of primaries there, there are not many you would automatically identify as being sure wins for the senator.  As I’ve mentioned before, Obama did not surpass Hillary in the national polls until four weeks after Iowa and Bill Clinton did not win any of the first five primaries in 1992.

Of course, winning the first two won’t hurt him one bit and will confirm another long drawn out road to the nomination.

If there is not considerable regret and second guessing floating around the Clinton campaign right now regarding their decision to manipulate the nomination process through limiting the number of candidate debates, there should be. Two of the latest national polls released show Hillary’s lead over Bernie Sanders shrinking to single digits from some pre-Christmas highs of over 30 points. Others show huge momentum for Sanders in Iowa and New Hampshire.

I know as well as anyone that strategy decisions in a campaign always bear an element of risk that you’ve miscalculated. But (and of course hindsight is always 20/20–and there is still much more “hind” to be sighted on this point), this strategic call in my mind seems to have all the markings of the deeper flaw that this campaign and her 2008 campaign have been burdened with. In a word, that defect is over-managing the campaign which is generally the result of over-thinking particular components of it.  Read More »

I received a FB message from a friend linking to the general election match-ups which show Hillary Clinton polling only moderately well or not-so-well against a number of Republican candidates. Today we learn from the Washington Examiner that according to a Fox News poll “Clinton trails or ties four leading Republicans.”

How much faith should we put in these general election opinion surveys here in the deep darkness of January? To answer that, let me cite two 2008 polls for you.

December 1-16, 2007
Giuliani: 46%
Clinton: 42%

January 8-11, 2008
McCain: 51%
Obama: 39%

Slow down and relax, folks. There’s a lot of highway between here and November. Enjoy the scenery while you can.

Group A: Nixon, Reagan, Bush 41, Dole, McCain, Romney.

Group B: Goldwater, Bush 43.

What’s the difference between Group A and Group B?

It’s often said that Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line. This translates to Democrats tend to turn their backs on their presumptive nominees while Republicans tend to coalesce around theirs. By a year to 18 months out from primary season, a front runner tends to emerge for each party’s next nomination. History shows that when a party has an open primary (i.e. when it does not have an incumbent to nominate), Republicans will usually nominate their front runner and Democrats will become enamored of a new face and nominate him or her (McGovern, Carter, Dukakis, Clinton, Obama).Read More »

Good news for the Cruz campaign in a poll released yesterday out of California.  According to Field Research Corporation’s survey, the Texas senator leads all GOP contenders with 25%, over Trump at 23% and Rubio at 13%.

This is important for Cruz, but not because California is such a large state with a big gang of delegates at stake. The California primary won’t be held until June 7. Barring the unlikely three or four-way extended dogfight, it’s held too late to really make any difference in the outcome, which should be determinable by March 16 or so.

No, it’s important because it is one piece of data that suggests Cruz might be able to serious contend outside the southern and more traditionally conservative states–states with large urban areas that tend to have more moderate Republican voters–if there are in fact any of those left these days. So, there may be life for him beyond HuckabeeSantorumland.

Of course, it’s just one poll and it’s hard to say what his numbers might look like there after the herd thins. But being able to say you’re running ahead of Trump in California is, if nothing else, a great angle for his fundraising and overall credibility.

From Huffington Post a gentleman by the name of HA Goodman offers up what is labeled an analysis of why Bernie Sanders  will be the next president. A little disclaimer here. I’m a progressive and I support Bernie Sanders. In my writing about election campaigns and contests however, I try to speak from my head and not my heart. Mr. Goodman provides us an example of the latter. It’s a storage unit chock full of random odds and ends of incoherent ideas and notions delivered with all the enthusiasm of a pennant waving kid at his first major league baseball game.  I posted a long comment. I’ve posted an edited version of it after the jump.Read More »

While the right wing pundit worry factor is rising, there still seems to be near unanimous agreement that Donald Trump will not be the nominee of the Republican party this election. So, it’s worth asking: Just how hard, how fast and how far must Trump fall to blow this thing? Inquiring minds want to know. Well, take a look at this graph.

It shows the national polling for two GOP front runners for this election and the two previous: McCain (blue) and Giuliani (yellow) in 2008; Romney (grey) and Gingrich (green) in 2012; and Trump (red) and Cruz (black) this year.  The timeline is adjusted to reflect days out from and days after Iowa. So, -2 is two days before, 1 is the day after, etc.*

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In which we explain why the RNC is so nervous about Donald Trump.

So, you’re convinced that an extended primary process in 2012 doomed your candidate in the general election. Not your policies, not bad polling, not stupid comments by your candidate, and not demographics shifting away from your party, with your base literally dying off.

Okay, granted, the drawn out primary schedule didn’t exactly help Romney’s chances in 2012, but as I explained in a previous post, it wasn’t really the calendar but conservative and libertarian stalwarts simply refusing to concede in a timely fashion to a more moderate crown prince that was the real crippling factor.

Any so-called “establishment” candidate who manages to thread the needle this time around and win the nomination can expect the same treatment from those in the right wing of the party trampled upon. The bad blood is just starting to boil out there and the pot will be seething once the voting and caucusing starts.Read More »