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Shakeup in the Ricochet Primary
The results of Ricochet’s August GOP primary poll are in! [Editor’s Note: Not a Ricochet member? That’s easily fixed.] As you will notice, Governor Scott Walker’s commanding lead over the field has completely vanished and he is now tied with Carly Fiorina as the top pick. Below, is the first choice among Ricochet members:
Q: Who is your first choice for the GOP Nominee?
The next chart shows the trend of this month’s top-four candidates over the course of the year. As you can see, Fiorina’s rise has been nearly as dramatic as Walker’s fall:
Top four candidates performance over time among the Ricochetti.Click the graph for a full-sized version.
For second choice candidate, Fiorina and Rubio are tied. Interestingly, there were more votes for other candidates, though all of them had such small numbers that I didn’t include them. This is the first time “other” received more votes than the frontrunners.
Q: Who is your second choice for GOP Nominee?
I then dug a little deeper and looked at who Walker supporters picked as their second choice. They move towards Rubio and then Cruz.
The second choice of those who selected Walker as their first choice.
I did the same for Fiorina’s supporters, who also go to Rubio’s camp as an alternative.
The second choice of those who selected Fiorina as their first choice.
This last chart shows the combined first and second choices of the top four of the candidates. Interestingly, it shows that Fiorina gets more votes than any other candidate, reinforcing the trend we saw that gave her a lift in the field.
Now that members have seen how the candidates are starting to perform — or, in some cases, underperform — it’s natural to see some movement. I find the increased support for Cruz interesting since he hasn’t been very popular at Ricochet. I’m looking forward to seeing what twists and turns the next few months hold.
Published in Politics
Walker’s campaign needs to be called. Who’s following it?
Time of death: 4 September 2015.
Nice to see Bush isn’t even specifically mentioned.
Amnesty shill Rubio’s numbers are sadly too high.
Is it possible that some of Walker’s poll supporters dozed off during one of his speeches and haven’t woken up yet?
After reading your earlier comment I was going to say that it sounded like you were suggesting a runoff. Max is handling the setup and data collection but I’d just say that it’s a bit taxing for people to go through that many iterations. My only concern is that we lose too many people.
As an aside, at our shop we had a couple of projects recently where we tested preferences for several options, one being a campaign for county supervisor. We came up with paired comparisons to test a field of four candidates, yielding six comparisons. The matrix we built out of those responses gave us a measure of each candidates preference score compared to every other candidate.
Hey now! You should treat your pollster like your doctor or priest.
I am working on a spreadsheet that can do it. Or I can write a program.
The real problem is how to make matrix ballot that could be run here on the site. Tough thing to do, I know.
I only claim that this is the only way to precisely ferret out in one snapshot what people really think about the whole (or most anyway) set of candidates.
Yes it is.
Walker in the White House would make it easier to sleep at night. I personally think that’s a good quality in a President and certainly not a quality of the current occupant. However, sleepy is pretty hard to get charged up about and people are too worried about the state of the world and direction of the country to vote for someone that doesn’t inspire a more zealous kind of support.
I still think there isn’t a better man in the race, but there are other equally good men in the race. I wouldn’t be sorry to keep him in Madison a bit longer.
Bereket: This is good stuff, but you’ve got to quit confusing me with actual data.
I’m one who’s shifted from a strong Walker vote to someone else. Like others, I don’t have a clear-cut number one choice. I think I voted Rubio first and Carly second, but I find both very impressive. I also like Carson a lot–I worry about his lack of experience (though that doesn’t bother me so much with Carly: I think the difference is that her experience in the private sector had the rough and tumble feel of real politics).
I haven’t abandoned Walker completely. He can still make a case for himself, but he’d better start soon.
Despite my dyspepsia about Trump, I’m still pretty bullish about next year.
Despite my leanings, I’m open to being convinced by several of the candidates (I can’t do Trump, and Rand Paul is just a bridge too far for me).
Perfectly stated.
Great summary, as usual, BK. Thanks.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record: In addition to thinking about candidates supporting our positions, and presenting themselves well, I submit that we need to focus on Electoral College math. This points to Walker, Rubio, Kasich, and Christie as the most important candidates.
Florida (27 EVs) is the most important swing state. Rubio on the ticket probably swings Florida. This is huge.
Ohio (18 EVs) is the second most important swing state. Kasich on the ticket probably swings Ohio. This is really, really big.
Wisconsin (10 EVs) is a borderline swing state, tilting Dem in Presidential elections. Walker on the ticket will carry Wisconsin. This is pretty big. I suspect Walker will also swing Ohio, which is really big.
New Jersey (14 EVs) is a solid blue state. Christie on the ticket will carry NJ. Christie might also swing PA. Both of these are really, really big.
Try as she might, Fiorina is not going to bring over CA, and probably has virtually no impact on any other swing state.
Texas is a lock, so Cruz and Perry bring no home-field advantage.
Looks like really good news for Rubio. I have to admit he’s grown in my eyes as well, though I haven’t picked him for either 1 or 2. Perry has dropped from number two for me, not because of anything he’s done but because he’s kind of fallen and doesn’t look likely. But I stick with governors. I went with Huckabee as my number two, only because he impressed me in the debate and he’s very good at articulating the issues, though I admit I don’t like his consumption tax position to replace the income tax. I remain a Jeb supporter. I don’t care what you all think. I still think he’s got the most stature, the best qualifications, and the best governing record of them all. And he has a broad range of appeal that possibly only Rubio might have.
I am just glad our pollster is still running this joint.
It’s worth pointing out that Trump’s supporters aren’t typical GOP primary voters, contrary to what most may think. When you break down his support across the spectrum you’ll see that he does better the farther left you go, to a point. In some polls we see Trump even losing among republicans/conservatives. Just something to keep in mind.
I make it a point NOT to make electoral college math a factor in who I support. I suppose somebody has to do it, but I wish I didn’t have to see it being done. It’s just too painful to watch Republicans try to do strategy. I’d prefer to believe that they just have terrible luck.
So none of the top 3 candidates according to all of the national polls (i.e. Trump, Carson, and Bush) placed in the top 6 in the Ricochet poll.
Does that mean we’re a poor representation of the Republican primary electorate?
In that case, can you tell me my cholesterol numbers for this year?
I once spent a fair amount of time looking into the other voting schemes – principally because they constitute an example of what are called “multi-criteria decision” methods (in this case, each voter’s rank ordering of candidates becomes an additional criteria for selecting the best alternative – candidates here). I have subsequently forgotten most of what I learned. Still, I want folks here to understand that there are other ways of dropping candidates in succession – one could vote on who to drop, for example, rather than finding the least attractive ‘best’ candidate… ad infinitum.
The one flaw that has to be avoided when performing a pairwise competition is the so-called “agenda setter” flaw. Just about any candidate can be made to survive to later rounds by the bracketologist (aka, agenda setter) always pairing him/her up against weaker candidates – and this most importantly – making sure at the same time that the candidates who could easily beat him/her are themselves defeated earlier in some other bracket. All I have to say on the matter.
How has Trump dispatched Jeb Bush?
Bush is still ahead of everyone except Trump and Carson in national polls. Seeing as how the Republicans have always nominated a politician and not an outsider in recent history, that means Jeb Bush is realistically speaking in first place.
I would argue the opposite: if Trump were not in the race, Jeb Bush would be getting a lot more attention, and a lot more people would see what a horrible candidate he is and he would have already fallen behind Cruz, Rubio, and possibly even Walker and/or Kasich. If anything, Trump is propping up Jeb’s position.
Yes!
We’ve heard your reasons and they make no sense! You’re basically saying that you like Trump “upsetting the apple cart” purely for the sake of upsetting it, and the fact that he is objectively the least conservative candidate in the race doesn’t seem to penetrate.
If you’re really more interested in “turning the apple cart on its head” than in actually advancing conservative policies at least be honest about it.
It’s not always easy to know which is more important.
That means we are much more sophisticated than the general electorate.
Remember Adali Stevenson?
“During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to Mr. Stevenson “Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!” Stevenson called back “That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!”
To say what every other conservative has said, we need a Reagan. We need somebody to create Reagan democrats. We need somebody who can speak to Ricochetti conservative intellectuals as well as those on the other side of the aisle that can be convinced.
It’s a bad idea to say that we vote different than other people because we are smarter so there and we don’t have to worry about the other side. (Admittedly, I say this as a Ben Carson fan.)
The whole Trump thing has been pretty rough on Ricochet but I really like that very different kinds of conservatives are forced to talk to each other. I think every side should be a bit more polite about it.
Did you ever look into BC-STV.British Columbia comissioned a massive, open study of electoral systems in the early 2000’s. They identified tho options and recommended their favorite: BC-STV. For a multi-party, multi-seat (ie senate or House), it’s my favorite, too. It is the only one I like better than first-past-the-post.
The system is explained here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BC-STV
The committee that recommended BC-STV in late 2004 also produced summaries of the options in spring 2004: http://citizensassembly.arts.ubc.ca/public/extra/factsheet_intro.xml.htm
The only people that hear more lies than doctors and priests are customer service agents, and that’s only because customer service agents talk to more people.