Free Republic

GREENVILLE, S.C.—As Donald Trump studied the crosstabs of a recent poll, his favorite hobby since he started leading in all of them, he was pleased, he said, to see that GOP primary voters perceive him as better equipped than his rivals to handle the economy, national security and even social issues. But one nugget in the survey nagged at the New York billionaire. “The only thing I did badly on was: Is he a nice person? I was last in terms of niceness,” he said. Campaigning deep in the Bible Belt yesterday, the businessman spun this as an asset, not...

The Texas Republican believes that when (not if) Trump falters, he'll absorb the current front-runner's followers.TUSCALOOSA, Alabama—Four days after Donald Trump drew tens of thousands of supporters to a modest, multipurpose football arena in this state, Ted Cruz stood 200 miles away inside a glass-enclosed suite overlooking the north end zone inside legendary Denny-Bryant Stadium. Here, in the home of the Alabama Crimson Tide, Cruz offered blistering critiques identical to those delivered by Trump—a nation in decline, an immigration crisis, a government corrupted by career politicians in both parties. Yet Cruz, speaking to several hundred suit-and-tie Republicans at a plated...

Polling experts agree on one thing when it comes to Donald Trump’s presidential run: They’ve never seen anything like it. His dominance of the Republican presidential race is forcing experienced political hands to question whether everything they know about winning the White House is wrong. While political scientists and other experts continue to insist Trump will not win the Republican nomination, he’s converted at least one high-profile skeptic. GOP pollster Frank Luntz had dismissed Trump from the start, and declared after the first presidential debate that his campaign was doomed. But after convening a focus group Monday evening where Trump...

The big, existential question for Republicans right now is: who are Donald Trump’s supporters? It matters because this will determine the future, and the future prospects, of the party. I heartily agree with Ben Domenech, whose article on this just made it harder for me to fulfill my obligations to his publication, by pre-empting most of what I was planning to write about Trump for The Federalist. Ben argues that Trumpism would turn the Republicans from a “classically liberal right” to a European-style nationalist party that is “xenophobic, anti-capitalist, vaguely militarist, pro-state, and consistently anti-Semitic. If you criticize Donald Trump,...

I'm shocked that he's shocked, and I do not mean that as a joke. He is a professional. He is a focus-grouper and high consultant. I imagine he reads a lot of polls too, and probably runs some. And yet he didn't know the anger brewing at the Establishment.I am truly shocked. No matter how low my estimations of our political class, they keep failing to meet my expectations. I complained on Friday that the vaunted consultant class does not know the most elemental things about the "constituency" they're paid to advise clients about. I put "constituency" in quotes because...

Earlier this month, I outlined Donald Trump’s “Six Stages of Doom” — the hurdles he’ll have to clear to win the Republican nomination. The first obstacle: Could Trump keep his polling numbers up when another storyline emerged that prevented him from monopolizing the news cycle? “For a variety of reasons, Trump isn’t affected much by negative media coverage — it may even help him,” I wrote. “But a lack of media coverage might be a different story.” It’s too soon to say whether Trump has passed this first test. Partly because it’s August — almost half a year before Iowa...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — “Nothing disqualifies Trump.” That was the takeaway of Frank Luntz, the public opinion guru, after leading a focus group Monday night of supporters of Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign.(VIDEO-AT-LINK) For two and a half hours, Luntz quizzed a group of current and past ardent Trump fans about their views on the businessman. He discussed the candidate’s past liberal stances and played past video of Trump saying provocative things about women. Yet when the focus group was over, not a single person who was planning to vote for him said they had changed their mind. At one point,...

One America News Network, “OAN”, a credible source for 24/7 national and international news, released today its most recent 2016 Republican Presidential National Poll results conducted by Gravis Marketing. One America News Network’s latest national poll shows some amazing results for political outsider Donald Trump. The New York real estate mogul has surged 30% above his pre-debate first place poll finish of 30.8% (as reported by OAN on July 31st) soaring to a new high of 40.1%. Dr. Ben Carson, who won the GOP first debate as reported by OAN per its post-debate national poll results, has moved into second...

With the Iowa caucuses less than six months away, Donald Trump has taken a runaway lead among the GOP candidates. While Trump has a commanding position in poll after poll, some news outlets are doing everything they can to downplay his candidacy. Whether by comparing Trump to Herman Cain in 2012, citing his inability to garner the grassroots support needed to win the presidential nomination, or by publishing headlines that a majority of Republican strategists and operatives doubt his capability of winning in either Iowa or New Hampshire, the media loves to hate on the New York-based developer. *snip* After...

Earlier this month, we noted that Donald Trump's polling surge and lead -- only two weeks old at the time -- tracked with the surges seen by Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich in the 2012 cycle. With another few weeks under his belt, we can update the chart in that post to show that Trump's pattern no longer matches Perry and Gingrich. That could change, of course. Trump's about four or five days out from where Perry and Gingrich dropped off, but there haven't been many polls recently.It is also possible that it won't change.Fox News has been polling on...

Donald Trump’s meteoric rise has perplexed most pundits. Trump doesn’t fit into the traditional categories of GOP aspirants, so many have found it hard to say why he has risen and to discern whether he has a realistic shot at the nomination. The most common explanations are that he is either attracting tea-party conservatives or wooing the same bloc of socio-economically “downscale” voters that backed Ross Perot in 1992. A close look at the data, however, shows that neither explanation is quite accurate. The polls indicate that Trump’s support is unusually balanced among the GOP’s ideological factions for a candidate...

Republican voters show no signs they are growing weary of the brash real estate mogul, who has dominated political headlines and the 17-strong Republican presidential field with his tough talk about immigration and insults directed at his political rivals. The candidates are vying to be nominated to represent their party in the November 2016 general election. Nearly 32 percent of Republicans surveyed online said they backed Trump, up from 24 percent a week earlier, the opinion poll found. Trump had nearly double the support of his closest competitor, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who got 16 percent. Retired neurosurgeon Ben...

Fifty-seven percent of Republican voters surveyed by Rasmussen Reports said that they expect Donald Trump to win the party's presidential nomination next year.

It seems that Texas Republicans, like Republicans everywhere else, have caught Trump fever. Insert your favorite pathology joke here. Donald Trump is the favored presidential candidate among Texas Republican voters, according to a poll released today by the Texas Bipartisan Justice Committee. The Houston Chronicle reported the results. Trump leads the poll with 24 percent support. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who had led most Texas polls up to this point, came in second with 16 percent. Neurosurgeon Ben Carson is the only other candidate to garner more than 10 percent. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina...

Republican presidential hopeful Gov. Scott Walker continues to face significant dissatisfaction among voters in his home state with his job approval dipping below 40 percent for the first time in a new Marquette Law School Poll released Thursday. The poll also found Walker is leading other Republican presidential candidates in his home state, but has significantly less support than he did in April. The poll found 39 percent of registered voters approve of Walker's job performance, while 57 percent disapprove. That 18-point gap is three points larger than it was in the previous Marquette poll in April, which saw a...

Using national “if the election were today” polling numbers to determine debate slots is the dumbest idea since the now-deceased NCAA Bowl Championship Series. Here’s an example why—from New York Magazine: “Poll Numbers Improving for 15-Year-Old Presidential Candidate ‘Deez Nuts’” A new Public Policy Polling poll released today shows that 9 percent of North Carolina voters have a sense of humor or are already tired of the election; when asked whether they would vote for Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, or independent candidate Deez Nuts in November 2016, 9 percent chose the questionably named underdog. That means that Deez Nuts, who...

One of my working hypotheses this year is the possibility that partisan polarization has made a hash of traditional “electability” arguments for this or that “moderate” presidential candidate for the simple reason that swing voters are harder to find and harder to sway than in the past. The data are a bit unclear on the subject just yet, and the cycle is still young. But new CNN/ORC poll findings today should provide a very rude shock to those who think Republican voters will finally wake up and realize Donald Trump would be a disaster as a general election candidate and...

<p>The political story of the summer is Donald Trump’s polling. But the political story of the year is the disastrous condition of polling in the age of the Internet and the cellphone, not just here but worldwide.</p> <p>How can we reconcile the two? We can’t.</p>

Poll: “Congrats Michael Brown one year with no criminal behavior” I think this sign is a great idea, because it tells the truth. It seems to me the only people who would be upset by it are the people who don’t want people to know that Brown was a criminal. For example, Obama tried to block the release of the security video which showed Brown committing theft and assault, despite the fact that there had been multiple Freedom of Information requests for the video. I like this sign because it is a victory for the truth.The News-Gazette reports:Business’ sign causes a...

While all eyes are on Donald Trump’s latest reality show, also known as the Trump for President Campaign, some in the media are wondering of the ultimate winner of the current media circus will be Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Politico noted on Sunday that while Trump dominated the news since the Republican presidential debate, Cruz soared in the Fox News poll to third place, just behind Trump and Dr. Ben Carson. Cruz has been on a bus tour through the southern states, drawing large crowds at every stop. The Daily Caller suggested that even though Trump supporters would also tend...