Thinking about Trump's Numbers

Donald Trump, depending on what you may be reading, has had two distinct and possibly related news items dominate this week.

First, he has been aggressively pressing for limitation on the issuance of visas to, and the allowance to immigrate here by, Muslims in general and people claiming to be Syrian refugees in particular.  For that, he has been vilified in the press and among Democrats as a racist bigot and a bad, bad guy.

Second, his poll numbers have risen as he has gained numbers against the other dozen or so active candidates for the Republican nomination.  Seriously.

Now, while the former is a predictable action on Trump's part, and an even more predictable response on the part of the left, which certainly must fear Trump's ascent and his popularity, the latter is way more complicated than it sounds.  And here's why.

A month ... OK, three months back, I wrote a piece castigating the press for trying to minimize Trump's impact by saying that his support was only among the quarter of Republicans selecting him in polls, and that number itself was only a quarter of Americans; leaving Trump as being only liked by maybe 6% of the USA.  They weren't saying that explicitly, but the implication was that no one really supported him.

My point -- and please do read the piece -- was that there were more than a dozen candidates on the Republican side, many with barely-conscionable differences in their approaches and philosophies.  Liking Marco Rubio slightly more than Trump certainly didn't mean the polled voter didn't like Trump or wouldn't vote for him.  It only meant that he or she slightly preferred Rubio and would have no problem in voting for Trump were he the eventual nominee.

In other words, if Trump were the current preference of 28% of Republicans polled, there are two other constituencies of interest: the 72% of Republicans polled who selected a different candidate as their top choice, and the 55% of those who could have been polled who are Democrats or independents but weren't included in the poll.

Although those two constituencies are quite different, there is a similarity for the sake of this argument and this piece.  They are all people who may vote.  And when they have to push a lever in November, Donald Trump may be the Republican candidate and they can decide that they'd rather vote for him than Hillary Clinton, if she is not in prison then.

So the interesting question, not asked, becomes not whom their top preference is, but whether they are reasonably certain to vote for Trump if he is the Republican candidate.  Or another way, how soft is Trump's support among those Republicans for whom he is not the top candidate? 

Is that not a very interesting question?  I mean, Trump is not my lead guy but I would certainly vote for him in November if he is the candidate.  But that's me.  How many people like me are out there who are far more troubled than I by the portrayal of him as somehow racist -- or, more likely, are sufficiently deterred by his bluntness or other prominent attribute that they wouldn't vote for him?

Here's the thing, and I hope you'll think about it.  I'm guessing, but I'm sure that 98% of people now supporting Chris Christie would vote for Marco Rubio if he became the candidate.  Maybe more.  That number is probably the same for most pairs of Republican candidates cast the same way.  Perhaps that number is lower for Jeb Bush or Rand Paul, were one the candidate in the end, but probably not that much.  Don't you think it is even lower now for Trump, given the bashing by the press, and the way that Trump often seems to find ways to say things in ways that come across as more offensive than others might?

Here is where I can't imagine why the polling companies are not going to the people in the Republican polls with a "level of depth of support", particularly needed on the Republican side.  Something like, "Here are the thirteen active candidates, and you have already indicated that you plan to vote for one of them in the primary in your state. For all the other twelve, please indicate whether, if the election were held today, you would vote for each one, or vote for Hillary Clinton, or not vote at all."

If I'm Reince Priebus, the head of the Republican National Committee, I want that data.  I want it now, because if one or two of the candidates might show substantial weakness in the "secondary market", I'm going to have a big problem if their support strengthens only amongst those for whom that is the leading candidate.  But if anyone is collecting that data, we're sure not hearing about it.

Donald Trump's primary support -- those for whom he is the most-preferred candidate -- is the highest of any of the candidates.  When he says something controversial, that seems to rise rather than fall, presumably because his tendency toward controversy is what attracts them in the first place.  However, that is potentially deceptive; if his primary support rises but an even larger number of Republicans and independents find themselves less able to vote for him, that is a problem.

And if it is, we need to know it.  And surely we need to know that now.

Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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