Live from Bullwinkle Plaza: Where oh where are Nate Silver and Sam Wang on this?:
: 2016 President--Republican Nomination:
The only four things truly on-point are:
: Donald Trump Is The World’s Greatest Troll: Candidates who are perceived as having a credible chance to win the nomination...
...receive proportionally more media attention than public attention. The reverse is true for candidates who are seen by the press as long shots, such as Rand Paul and Ben Carson.... Press attention both leads and lags public attention to the candidates.... The public can take cues from the media about which candidates to pay attention to. But the media also gets a lot of feedback from the public.... If Trump-related stories are piling up lots of pageviews and Trump-related TV segments get good ratings, then guess what? You’re probably going to see more of them. This creates the possibility of a feedback loop.... It may help to explain why we’ve repeatedly seen the so-called ‘discovery, scrutiny and decline’ cycle in the past two primary campaigns for candidates like Trump, Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain--bursts of attention that coincide with spikes in the polls but then fade or even burst after several weeks.... The polls in the 2012 Republican campaign were far more volatile than those in any previous nomination race. We’re really just getting started in 2016, but it’s been pretty wild as well. Bounces that might have happened once in a cycle now seem to occur all the time....
Trolls are skilled at taking advantage of this landscape and making the news cycle feed on its own tail.... In 2012, Gingrich’s whole strategy seemed to involve trolling the media, and he went through a couple of boom-and-bust cycles in polls. In 2008, Sarah Palin, though beloved by Republicans, was brilliant at trolling Democrats and the media. She was extremely popular at first, although her popularity was ultimately short-lived. Trump has taken trolling to the next level by being willing to offend members of his own party.... In the long run--as our experience with past trolls shows--Trump’s support will probably fade. Or at least, given his high unfavorable ratings, it will plateau, and other candidates will surpass him as the rest of the field consolidates....
But what if you want Trump to go away now? The media isn’t going to stop paying attention to Trump. Nor should it, really: His candidacy is a political story and not just ‘entertainment.’... Republicans should resist the temptation to extend the news cycle by firing back at him, however--even when what he says is genuinely offensive. After 12 years of writing on the Internet, I’ve learned that the old adage is true. Don’t feed the troll. The only way to kill a troll like Trump is to deprive him of attention.
: The 2016 Endorsement Primary: "In presidential primaries, endorsements have been among the best predictors...
...of which candidates will succeed and which will fail. So we’re keeping track:
: Republicans Are Acting Like Democrats. Democrats Are Acting Like Republicans: "This year, the historical trend has reversed itself...
...On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is the only candidate with any endorsements from current governors or U.S. senators and representatives. And she has a boatload... 243 endorsement points, the highest figure ever at this stage of the race for a Democrat.
Republicans, however, haven’t fallen in line behind anyone. Jeb Bush is the nominal endorsement front-runner, but his 18 endorsement points are the lowest total for any leader at this point in the campaign since Tsongas in 1992.... Endorsements also came slowly in the 2012 Republican nomination contest.... That race got off to a later start than this one did, however, with candidates waiting until relatively late in the cycle to begin campaigning for president. It may be that would-be Republican endorsers suffer from a paradox of choice.... But the Republican Party is also divided between at least five identifiable constituencies: moderates (who still have influence in states like New Hampshire), establishment voters, Christian conservatives, libertarians, and populist (or so-called tea party) voters.... These constituencies are different from the factions that have traditionally made up the Democratic Party.... But they’ve proved to be real fault lines for Republicans...
: Donald Trump Is Not the Frontrunner. Smarter Polls Would Prove It: "In a conventional poll, Trump can vault into the top position...
...In contrast, instant-runoff polls would highlight Trump’s very low ceiling of support.... 43 percent of GOP voters view Trump unfavorably.... 66 percent of Republicans could not see themselves supporting Trump.... Trump has worse unfavorables than any presidential candidate since 1980. With numbers like these, it is basically impossible for Trump to win a majority of Republican votes.... I came up with a simple measure of candidates’ hidden support: a ‘second-choice ratio,’ defined as the number of second-preference responses divided by first-preference responses.... Rubio's median second-choice ratio is 1.1, suggesting the most potential for future growth. Behind Rubio are Huckabee, at 0.9; Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, and Rand Paul at 0.8; and Scott Walker at 0.7. Trump brings up the rear at 0.6....
So is Trump doomed? Probably, but one loophole remains. Starting late in the primary season, over a dozen states have winner-take-all primaries, where finishing first is enough to win delegates...
But I want MOAR!
