In New Hampshire, Donald Trump is right where he’s been since August. In seven polls done February 2-4, he is at a median of 29.0 ± 1.4 %. He was rising in late January, but that came back down after the Iowa caucuses on February 1. So he’s stuck…in first place.
Marco Rubio continues a slow rise that started in August, and has now jumped to second place, at 17.0 ± 1.1 %. Bush, Kasich, and Christie are approximately unchanged (and in fact Kasich has risen in the last few weeks), which contradicts the idea that the establishment tier of candidates has a sealed pool of support. Instead, Rubio’s gains came at Trump’s expense. Perhaps there is a sliver of malleable voters who are moving back and forth between apparent winners. So the pool of undecided voters (7%) could move results by a fair bit on Tuesday from the data available now.
The only other candidates who are obviously above the 10% threshold for getting delegates are Ted Cruz (13.0 ± 1.1%) and John Kasich (13.0 ± 1.2%). Now tied for 3rd/4th place, evidently Cruz got no benefit at all from Iowa. Kasich has said “if we get smoked here, I’m going home.” A third-place finish, if it happens, would seem respectable. Finally, we have Jeb Bush at 9.0 ± 0.3%, barely out of the money. He could well get above threshold.
The 10% threshold in New Hampshire imposes a certain tyranny on candidates who do not finish first. In addition to leaving lower-tier candidates without any delegates, any delegates who are not assigned go to the top finisher. Under current conditions, that would lead to the assignment of 20 delegates as shown above.
New Hampshire’s case is not unusual. Despite the fact that the Republican National Committee has mandated “proportional” representation in early states, the definition of proportional still gives a bonus to high-finishing candidates. See my analysis in The American Prospect and here on PEC.
In addition to the UMass daily tracking poll:
http://www.uml.edu/docs/2-6%20TOPLINE%20-%20UMassLowell-7NEWS%20NH%20PRIMARY_tcm18-230852.pdf
ARG has a tracking poll:
http://americanresearchgroup.com/pres2016/primary/rep/nhrep.html
The latter shows Kasichmentum not captured by the former.
Saturdays ARG number has Kasich in second place @ 17 per cent . Don’t be surprised if the late breaking moderate voters put him over 20 .
Yet another tracking poll:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/07/politics/new-hampshire-poll-full-results/index.html
This shows Trump up/Rubio down even before last night’s Rubio debacle.
I imagine any candidates not getting the 10% will also be likely out of the race, besides not getting any delegates. I predict 2nd place for Kasich as well.
Predict Kasich in 2nd and no more than 10 points behind Trump.
Can see Rubio, and possibly Cruz (depending how many votes Trump is leaking to him), falling behind Bush once the votes are all counted.
Saturday’s debate won’t have hurt Christie, so he may just scrape the 10% threshold.
If the governors do all achieve >10%, then my guess is only Fiorina exits the race this week. Although if one of the governors gets 20% or close to it, then this may signal the departure of the others. Christie is vulnerable.
Yes I agree Kasich gets undecideds to finish 2nd . Then Rubio Bush with Cruz 5th New England ain’t Iowa or South Carolina.
I’m not seeing much movement in the tracking polls.
Wouldn’t amaze me if Bush sneaks second.
Final polls all over the place with four contenders for second, but uniformly suggest Christie is in trouble.
Rubio is impossible to predict – but he’s probably lucky the vote wasn’t the day after the debate, which could have seen him down in single digits.