Allah:
For the second day in a row, we have a poll showing Carson within the margin of error against Trump. Yesterday he trailed by four in a national survey with an MOE of six percent; today he’s four points back in a WBUR poll of New Hampshire with an MOE of 4.9 percent. Only once since late July has Trump polled lower than 24 percent in NH — until today.
Will we have a new frontrunner next week? We may know in as little as 12 hours depending upon how Trump and Carson do at tonight’s debate.
In third place is former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, with 11 percent. She’s ahead of the one-time New Hampshire front-runner, ex-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who’s at 9 percent with Ohio Gov. John Kasich…
Overwhelmingly, likely voters in the New Hampshire Republican primary say it’s “very important” that their chosen candidate “says what he or she truly believes.” Eighty-seven percent of poll respondents said that.
And 94 percent of Trump supporters said it’s “very important” their candidate “says what he or she truly believes.”…
Carson, too, benefits from people looking for someone who “says what he or she truly believes.” Ninety-two percent of his supporters said that’s what they want to see in their candidate.
That’s the fascinating thing about the Trump/Carson dynamic: They’re both perceived as unusually honest and authentic despite the fact that their personalities are polar opposites. Carson has an advantage over Trump, though, in his sheer likability. Compare their favorable ratings in this poll — and Fiorina’s:
To put that in perspective for you, Marco Rubio, another guy who always does exceptionally well in this metric, is at a mere 46/25 in NH. What’s driving that primarily, I assume, is that Carson and Fiorina are outsiders while Rubio isn’t. As for Trump, a guy who’s worked wonders in reversing his poor favorables with Republicans over the past three months thanks in part to his hard line on immigration — he’s at 68/28(!) nationally now, per YouGov — 45/40 is unusually poor in New Hampshire. It’s hard to see his lead there being durable if Carson has that wide of an edge on likability, especially if Trump does something stupid tonight to exacerbate the good cop/bad cop vibe with Carson. Randy Barnett sees a landmine waiting for him:
https://twitter.com/RandyEBarnett/status/644115678946009088
When you only have 376 people, nationally, who say they are ”Republican Primary Voters,” your ”poll” is less than useless.
That’s fewer than 8 people per state!
The overall poll called 1261 people.
But all the rest were not Republican Primary Voters.
The sample is way too small to be meaningful.
Ipwa and N.H are famous for upset picks–Both are concerned with how their states are viewed nationally–Don’t think either want to be associated with a carny charlatan like Trump—long way to go.
BTW HRC is having trouble in these two states as well,though she still has big lead over Bernie nationally.
Thus far, Trump has defied predictions. He is so novel and fresh (as far as politicians go), no pundits have the metric with which to measure a candidate like him. Carson as well.
I REALLY, REALLY like Carson but I worry about his experience and I really worry if he has it in him to get nasty when the time comes (and, if he were the nominee, it WOULD come).
Though I am not a Trump supporter, I really do appreciate how much he has the GOP elites so flummoxed. They promised to oppose Obama if we voted for GOP control of the senate, and we gave them that. But at every turn McConnell has produced nothing but kabuki wringing of hands, rolling over for Obama on everything. Now they seem surprised that the base is giving a spirited thumbs-down to Bush, Rubio and Christie, preferring Trump and Carson. These are the same geniuses that foisted Dole, McCain and Romney on us.
Yet again, we get another poll that excludes Cruz. This is despite the recent grassroots poll out of Florida of conservatives this past week showing Cruz with 41% support. What’s up with that?
The hypocrisy of the chatting class of the GOP leadership over Trump’s flirting with a 3rd party run, with Kristol (among others) threatening a 3rd party ticket should Trump be the nominee despite their dire predictions of a Trump 3rd party run causing an inevitable dem win is yet another clear example of the elites being completely out of touch with the base.