For the last few days, there have been a lot of opinions from the pundits and talking heads of the media about who won the GOP debate last Wednesday. I think these two polls answer that question pretty emphatically. They are the first two polls released showing GOP presidential preference since the debate -- and it looks like Carly Fiorina is the hands-down winner.
Why? Because she is the only candidate to substantially improve her position since then. She moved into a tie with Carson in the CNN / ORC Poll -- actually besting him by a single point (which is well within the margin of error). And she finished only 3 points behind Carson in the NBC News Poll. What was a two-man race last week, has now become a three-person race. Carson and Trump basically held their positions in these new polls.
The really shocking thing (at least to me) is the free fall Scott Walker is experiencing. He once led the polls, but now scored less than 1% in the CNN / ORC Poll, and got only 3% in the NBC News Poll. Is it over for Walker?
The CNN / ORC Poll was done between September 17th and 19th of a random national sample of 444 Republicans, and has a margin of error of 4.5 points.
The NBC News Poll was done between September 16th and 18th of a national sample of 5,118 voters, and has a 2 point margin of error.
But it is interesting that Fiorina is taking votes mostly from the establishment candidates -- and Carson, who is even more boring than Walker. So the top three candidates have absolutely no actual experience. It's truly amazing. I don't see Fiorina staying. But then, I didn't see Trump staying. So what do I know?
ReplyDeleteWalker's collapse is a surprise, because, at the beginning, he was the 'Establishment's' fall-back, if the American people noticed that JEB! was actually the dumber (and duller) Bush brother. They did -- turning "jeb?" into this year's Rudy Giuliani. But this didn't help Walker -- and the two, Bush and Walker, show the difference between dumb and ignorant -- and the only other possible establishment candidate -- at the beginning, was too noisy and then the George Washington Bridge fell on him.
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The 'establishment' and the money givers are proving to be less and less honored by the Republican masses -- who, like the rest of us, have a fast forward button on the remote for political tv ads and don't click on the Internet ads of anyone they don't already agree with. (As Karl Rove's record in the last two campaigns proved, big spending there does help the economy and may pay a lot of salaries, but it doesn't produce many winning candidates.)
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The Republicans have become 'pure id' on the Trump side, totally lost on the Carson side (he's actually the crazier of the two) and the last sensible ones are wandering around, shivering as they try and grab on to the two remaining possibilities -- I assume nobody with an elephant button will run to support someone as relatively sensible as Kasich. So, since I can't believe Trump and Carlson will last, or that their eagerly waiting vultures, Huckabee and Cruz. can put together a majority, it may come down to Carly and Rubio. (Root for Carly, Rubio would be the toughest one to beat.)