Discussion: Marco Rubio Dips Slightly In NH Tracking Poll, Tying With Ted Cruz

TPM Article Topics
1

Discussion for article #245689

2

“Obama is ruining the country”
“Obama is bad for the economy”
“Obama is creating division”
“Obama-- Oba— Oba”
sytem alert-- battery level low
Windows is shutting down

5 Likes
3

Now there is an accomplishment that only a GOP presidential candidate would point to as showing strength. Tying with Ted Cruz. It doesn’t get any better than that?

2 Likes
4

Oh, shut up, HAL. Let Matt Damon figure it out. Marco the Robot sure isn’t any rocket scientist. He doesn’t believe in science or even evolution. isn’t even much of a presidential candidate either.

No wonder Trump jumped into the GOP race. It’s like playing video games with babies who can’t hold their controllers. Christie could conduct a more convincing campaign from a federal penitentiary cell.

5

But wasn’t it just last week that Marco was surging, surging, surging behind Trump? Oh, that was last week’s headline.

Now, after the debate will we hear that Crispy is surging? Take a moment to think about that. Yeah, it’s a grotesque sight, isn’t it?

1 Like
6

I am thinking that Marco may have been wired with earphones and was being prompted from offstage. There was a romantic scene like this with Steve Martin in Roxanne.

If he wasn’t wired, Marco came across as intellectually lazy and programmed like a cheap Tickle-me Elmo toy after that replay-rewind incident in the Republican debate.

2 Likes
7

It’ll be interesting to see the reaction if these rankings hold on primary day. Will the media chatterboxes award Rubio another win based on another third place finish?

4 Likes
8

Open the pod doors, Marco!

9

This may finally be the opening Jim Gilmore needs.

5 Likes
10

Ack, my concern troll deepest fear is of Kasich. He is the least crazy of the bunch and actually can make a legitimate argument of working across the aisle. He’s also the only guy on the R side who isn’t saying the sky is falling.

I really want Rubio to take over the establishment ‘lane’ (well, I’d love it if Bush were there but sigh).

1 Like
11

I am seeing some polling that has him down as far as 5th

If he does that badly, he has some serious PR problems going forward. But perhaps even worse, if he doesn’t get a strong 2nd place finish, the “establishment” races continues. Anything less than that and its basically still wide open.

Which means more states handed over to Trump and Cruz. Rubio would be starting in a tie for second best case scenario, or in 3rd, it the establishment lane were already cleared. They simply cannot afford to spot the other candidates (Cruz and Trump) delegates before they really start their run.

2 Likes
12

`So changing TheUSA to less gun violence, less prejudice, better employment numbers, more civil discourse, more respect in the world, etc. etc is a bad thing?

3 Likes
13

I would love to see how they would try to spin a 3rd place finish for Rubio in NH.

14

Yes. How dare the black guy prez be a great one who accomplished most of these things despite a GOP congress and Supreme Court majority that did their best to block him at every turn?

15

I am going to project the results in the NH primary by working from the
back of the pack to the front and dividing up the 100% of the vote.

Ben Carson-1%

Carson got 9% in Iowa and has virtually no campaign presence in NH This
is similar to Fred Thompson in 2008 (13% Iowa) and Rick Perry (10%
Iowa) each of whom got about 1% in NH.

Carly Fiornia-4%

Fiorina has campaigned a lot in NH, seems to have a small base of
support their especially among some Republican women. She has been
consistently at 4% in the polls and seems unlikely to go up although
she could drop a bit.

Chris Christie-6%

Christie has been consistently at 4-6% in the polls and has been
working the state hard. However, there is a more attractive blowhard in
the race and two governors with better records and organizations. And
there is no evidence to suggest that he would be the beneficiary of
having weakened Marco Rubio in the debate. So I am giving him 6%.

Ted Cruz-11%

There are two real good comps for Cruz: Huckabee in 2008 (11%) and
Santorum in 2012 (9.5%)-both social conservatives who won Iowa and
spent little time in NH prior to the Iowa vote. Huckabee had only two
other competitive candidates ahead of him and Santorum only 3 others.
Cruz has four others competing to get into the top three and there is
absolutely no reason why he should be able to get more than 11% of the
vote.

With 22% allocated to the bottom half of the field we are left with 78%
for the top four.

Marco Rubio-13%

Rubio has been a bit higher than this in the polls but we have to
believe that the bad debate performance will cost him, there is a lot
of negative word of mouth on the street about him, which has been
reinforced by free media and by negative ads from Bush and Christie.
But Rubio is a better fit for NH than Cruz so my best guess is that he
does better than Cruz but not by much.

Jeb Bush-16%

I think that Bush has run an effective campaign in NH but don’t see any
evidence that voters who might be choosing between Bush and Kasich as
the two mature and experienced voices in the race have many reasons to
chose Bush instead of Kasich. But he should finish slightly ahead of
Rubio after the debate performance.

This leaves 49% of the vote unallocated and only two candidates
left-Trump and Kasich.

Donald Trump 23%

There is a lot of evidence that Trump will drop from his poll numbers
and little evidence that he can hold them. Historically (and from polls
this year), many GOP voters switch their choices in the last couple of
days and in NH is that they always choose the candidate that they see
as most electable. This has historically led to a drop of 10-15% from
the final poll numbers for the frontrunner. In Iowa a poll taken after
the caucus showed that 25% of the people that said they were voting for
Trump did not show up and/or did not vote for him. There is no evidence
at all in NH that Trump will avoid the “NH drop”. A 10% drop for him
or a 25% reduction in his voters would both result in about 23%. Trump
could go lower, but I see his absolute ceiling as being no more than
25%.

With many voters still making a choice, a campaign needs to be able to
contact persuadable voters in a number of ways-in-person, door-to-door,
surrogates, direct mail, advertising and phone banks (although phoning
has been shown this year to be the least effective). Trump has not done
many of these things and in fact has barely campaigned in the state
over the last week compared to all the other candidates except for Ben
Carson. He therefore, does not have the organization in place to
contact voters who are as of yet undecided and does not even have the
organization in place to identify those voters who would have been
receptive to his message had he been able to communicate it to them.
For Independents, there is another anti-establishment loud New Yorker
who has been contacting them directly for their vote-Bernie Sanders.
There are limits to running only a national media and Eventbrite
campaign and my guess is, that in the 2016 NH GOP primary, that limit
is 23%.

John Kasich-26%

So by default that leaves John Kasich the winner with 26%-which would
be the lowest percentage ever by a winner of a Dem or Rep primary.
Kasich is a candidate tailor made for NH and has quite a few
endorsements from newspapers and NH Republicans. While I do arrive at
this choice by a process of elimination I think that most NH voters
traditionally make their final decision based upon electability-the
only choices on electability are Kasich and Bush and Kasich wins that
matchup.

1 Like
16

"There’s no place like home
There’s no place like home
There’s no place like home,’’ intones Marco as he clicks flamenco heels 3 times.

17

Given that the margin of error in the tracking poll is twice as large as the dip, this means nothing.