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The South Carolina Primary: What to Watch For
The New Hampshire primary had me eating crow with Kasich’s second place win: I bought the conventional wisdom from the polls that Rubio was going to come in second on his way to working the 3-2-1 strategy that his campaign was pursuing to the nomination.
But the post-New Hampshire spin has largely ignored Katich’s Kasich’s second place victory, since everyone was concentrated on the smashing Trump win and Rubio’s slide. As I expected Rubio’s, rebounded in the polling from his New Hampshire loss and seems to be in a strong third and possible second place in South Carolina.
I’ll bullet my three scenarios and then lay out probable spin based on placement for each candidate. I’ll be considering all February polls per RealClearPolitics. Sadly, we do not have an Emerson poll ready for South Carolina since they nailed Iowa and New Hampshire (relatively speaking).
My three scenarios in order of likelihood:
Scenario 1: Trump, Cruz, Rubio — We’re back to the three man race, with talk about Rubio being the most electable reaching a fever pitch. Expect the slug match between Trump and Cruz to continue while Rubio concentrates all his efforts on destroying Cruz’s candidacy before the SEC Primary.
Scenario 2: Trump, Rubio, Cruz — Strong endorsements will be cited as the key to Rubio’s comeback, and more will follow as a flood of senators, governors from less red states, and the conservative media heap flowers and establishment dollars at Rubio’s feet as the savior of the Republican Party.
Scenario 3: Cruz, Trump, Rubio — Cruz’s basking in victory is short lived as all the talk will be about Rubio’s rebound and Trump files suit against Cruz over his eligibility.
Trump
As of right now Trump is leading in all the polls, averaging 17.5 points on his nearest competitor. The highest he’s been is 22 points ahead at 42% of likely voters, the lowest is 14 points ahead at 37% of likely voters. I think we can reasonably expect him to win South Carolina and, if so, the smart money is on him winning the nomination. Expect more “unstoppable” rhetoric and rending of garments from his critics once he walks away with the victory.
If he comes in second to any other candidate but Cruz there’ll be a long fight to the nomination as I don’t see him dropping out against Carson, Rubio, Bush, or Kasich because he can open his bank accounts or simply accept donations from his supporters to try and drown his opponents in cash; what hasn’t worked from Bush might work for Trump.
If he comes in second to Cruz, I expect accusations of cheating, one heck of a “concession” speech, and news that he’ll file suit to disqualify Cruz from the nomination for not being a natural born citizen. With Justice Scalia’s, passing one has to wonder how that suit will go as Trump and Cruz would appeal all the way to the Supreme Court and the lower courts are unreliable when it comes to these things.
Cruz
Cruz is coming in second in the polling average with a less than stellar 17.5 percent, with some polls showing him coming in third after Trump and Rubio, or fourth after Trump, Rubio, and Kasich. ARG, the polling firm that shows him in fourth, can probably be discounted as they also showed him in fourth in New Hampshire.
There is an outside chance Cruz win the state but keep in mind his average in the polls is much farther back than in Iowa. If Cruz wins South Carolina, he has a very good argument for being the only man who can beat Trump as he will have actually beaten Trump in two of three contests. Make no mistake, though: the anti-Cruz and anti-Trump forces who are backing the establishment lane candidates will make the point that Cruz only won in two very non-representative, conservative states that don’t look like Florida or Ohio which are the must-wins in conventional election political thinking.
If Cruz comes in second, he’ll still make the argument that he can win against Trump in the long run since he’ll have placed better than everyone else. However, there will be more calls for him to drop out as an unelectable candidate, as he’s put a lot of time and effort into South Carolina and it should be a good state for him.
If Cruz comes in third or below (especially below), he’ll have a hard time countering a narrative that his campaign is slipping away and the calls from him to drop in favor of whomever came in second will be deafening. He will probably fight through the SEC primary since he has a large campaign fund and a strongly funded Super PAC. He would have to burn a lot of money however to come through the primary with the top delegate count with a 1-3-3 placement.
Rubio
Rubio had a very bad primary in New Hampshire but the polls show him rebounding in South Carolina, which isn’t that surprising in a more conservative state. In the polls, he’s averaging about 16 percent; not great but it’s much better than his lane rivals Jeb Bush (10 percent) and John Kasich (9 percent). It looks like he’ll come in third but he could pull an upset with strong support from Tim Scott and Trey Gowdy and place second. I doubt he’ll win, but — if he does — prepare for some accusations that’ll make your hair stand on end. I’m not saying his campaign would try to steal the primary by the way, just stating what would happen in that unlikely scenario.
If Rubio comes in third, he has a ticket into the Nevada caucus where he’ll hope to place second and displace his rivals by absorbing votes from Kasich and Bush. Rubio’s candidacy depends on becoming a consensus candidate, so he has to beat Bush and Kasich by convincing margins (the numbers in the current polling would do). If so, you’ll see plenty of articles echoing Mona Charen’s “Open Letter to Jeb Bush” begging everyone but Cruz and Trump to drop out and support Rubio in order to stop Trump.
If Rubio comes in second you’ll see a lot of the same coverage you got from his third place finish in Iowa: second will become the new third and there will be a lot of talk about his recovery from the New Hampshire debate to the South Carolina debate. A second place finish in South Carolina will strongly position him for Nevada. If that goes well, he should be able to collect enough money to fight through to the supposedly blue GOP states’ primaries to collect enough winner-take-all delegates through pluralities to cinch the nomination by the convention.
In the unlikely event he loses to Bush, Kasich, or both he’s got real trouble on his hands and he’ll start losing big money donors as a flash-in-the-pan candidate. I’d expect some comparisons to Fred Thompson and Rick Perry to begin which will hurt him down the pike but, like Cruz, he won’t drop out until after the SEC primary.
Bush
Bush seems to be betting the house on South Carolina after a fourth-place finish in New Hampshire. Worse, he’s betting the house on a third place win: currently he’s in fourth place in South Carolina polling per RCP’s average, though a leaked internal poll has him in third, one point ahead of Rubio.
If Bush places fourth or lower, the calls from him to drop will be more insistent than ever and I have to think he’ll drop after Nevada. The one thing that may keep him in the race is the money he and his PACs have spent: he’ll go down as a political joke if he quits before the SEC primary and that’s not an easy place to be as the “more talented” son and brother of two presidents.
If Bush places third (or, inexplicably, better) he’s in for SEC primary although everyone in the conservative media will be asking why he’s still trying to win. Expect a lot of sound and fury from the conservative media on the web and on Twitter about him “stealing” votes from Rubio. If he and Rubio really are only one point apart at then end I’d expect Trump to become the nominee as neither one will drop out.
Kasich
Kasich is pulling about 10%, and as high as 14% in the ARG poll (I still don’t see him beating both Rubio and Cruz in South Carolina, but I don’t like the guy, so I’m biased) so he’s still game for the long run. Like Bush, his candidacy is based on a last-man-standing strategy.
He probably won’t drop until after Nevada if he comes in fifth, but he might based on lack of funding; somehow I don’t see him going into millions in debt in his quest to be the furthest-left candidate we’ve had for the GOP in 30 years, which is saying something with Romney and McCain being our last two nominees.
If he somehow comes in third, we’ll have to reevaluate the race especially if he beats Rubio and Bush. If he gets second, there’s a new frontrunner for the not-Trump candidate.
Carson
Does anyone see Carson doing better than he has? Hopefully, after South Carolina he goes home with dignity intact but he’s polling as low as 3 percent and as high as 7 percent in the RCP polls. I don’t see his campaign, which has been almost comically mismanaged at this point, giving him the infrastructure in the SEC primary.
Anything can happen in the famously dirty South Carolina primary however so we’ll see what occurs on Saturday.
However it goes, best of luck to your candidate!
Published in General
I completely agree that the not x = anti x fallacy is one of the dumbest in politics. Favorables are better, though.
I think it’s hard to imagine Carson getting into the head to head, but yes, the sort of scenarios where he gets there soon (a genuinely incredible speech, an assassination attempt, both plus many other breaks going his way, or something) probably also see him win. A two man Carson/ Trump debate would be truly weird.
Bush beats him pretty easily.
That reason is that after the horse race questions they ask about white supremacy, whether the wrong side won the Civil War, whether the practice of Islam should be illegal, and whether gays should be prevented from immigrating, because they know the answers will be embarrassing.
They score pretty highly on accuracy.
I have non-trivial assets to take with me. Any sane country would let me in. The issue here in America is letting people in who will be a net drain on those already there. The economics are dubious, but the cultural damage, which happens when immigration is combined with state-supported grifting, is obvious.
However, that has nothing to do with my opinion of Trump. I could support a conservative, or a good man, or some combination of both. Trump is neither, and has no credentials, moral or political, to being President of the United States; there is no reason to trust anything he says (and in fact many examples of his obvious lying) and many reasons to expect him to make very poor decisions. Just like some of us were able to see Obama would be an abject failure before his election, so too can we see that Trump will be a failure. Just like Obama, when the going gets tough, Trump will make the easy choice, not the right one, and will check out into a bubble of confirmation bias and sycophancy. There is absolutely no evidence in his biography to point to the contrary, unlike any of the good or great Presidents we’ve had in the past.
Trump is but a symptom that America is no longer capable of republican government, and I don’t find living under the boot of others to be my style. It was a great country, but it turns out Obama was the last nail in the coffin. Gramscian damage was a successful strategy after all. Republican government requires a culture that values virtue and morality, and both are in secular decline in America; the best we can hope for is benevolent dictatorship, but what we’ll likely get is fascist tyranny as the leftists thrash about trying to bring about their impossible utopia on Earth. Either way, liberty in America is dead, because tyranny of the majority is not real democracy, as the founders knew, but just tyranny. I’d rather not be here when the proscriptions of the kulaks start.
Looking at the Iowa poll I’m not so sure about that accuracy – they got Trump wrong by 4, Cruz wrong by 4, Rubio wrong by 9, Bush by 2, Carson by 2, Huckabee by 2 – that’s an aggregate of 23 points misallocated.
And if you look at their Iowa crosstabs Cruz’s favorability numbers were at +24, better than Trump’s +6 and way worse than Carson’s +52. Carson got 9% despite him being slightly more popular than ice cream.
Emerson’s much more accurate poll, everyone was underwater on Fav/Unfav except Bernie Sanders. Do you think Rubio loses to Sanders?
Murphy is just one part of a much larger problem. But for those of you that fear Trump, yeah, the GOP created him. The way they did business created a void, and he filled that void. Had they governed the way they promised during campaigns, Trump wouldn’t exist. But now it’s probably too late. I don’t think Trump is inevitable after a SoCar win, but I do think if he takes most of the Super Tuesday states… and right now it looks like he’ll take everything but Texas, Arkansas, and Minnesota (and he might tie in Texas, which splits delegates), THEN it’ll be game over for the rest of the field.
He has a decent Nevada operation, for what it’s worth. He could come fourth. The Super Tuesday map doesn’t look horrible for him either. He could find a state or two to focus on after that and hopes for a brokered convention. His big shot at deciding the election in favor of his fellow Seventh Day Adventist Heidi Cruz’s husband with a National Prayer Breakfast endorsement has passed, so there doesn’t seem like a strong motivation for him to stop appearing on TV.
LOL, yes, by all means, run to the countries that are far more socialist than the US, and ban guns, speech, and tax personal income higher than we do. “Eff YOU, Ebola! I’M choosing Anthrax!”
Are they less socialist than America is now? Not America ten years ago, America now. Also, at least New Zealand values property holders, since such a large portion of their country owns land, and knows it has limited resources.
If you have suggestions for a better local, I’m all ears. Succession of some sane states from the Union would obviously be better, but I don’t think we have enough state politicians with the stones to pull it off. Also, how do we win a civil war when it turns out half of our side is not actually on our side but just another flavor of statism? You don’t win civil war with less than a quarter of the population.
It’s depressing there really are no refuges for liberty left in the world…
So, who does Trump pick as running mate? Not VP, because he can’t overcome those negatives and beat even the criminal Hillary or the Socialist, Bernie. Not with the Supreme Court at stake, any Democrat who might have stayed home, won’t now.
I find it depressing to say it, but the new national polling has Trump at about 45%.
This is the most insane election ever.
Hillary barked.
The Mexican President contradicted the GOP front runner.
The best candidate in thirty years (Rubio) is rejected by half the party, over legislation that didn’t become law, and a amnesty position every single candidate once held as well.
Scalia died, with just enough time left, that it is awkward, but doable to stall. But what good is the stall if we continue the path we are on now?
We are doing everything we can to lose our rights forever by electing the barking woman President.
I don’t disagree. That’s why I said that if Ben was a politician he’d know that his leverage began to peak last Friday. It’s waning now and at 7:01PM ET this Saturday it likely fades away. But, he isn’t a politician.
Austin Murrey: Emerson’s much more accurate poll, everyone was underwater on Fav/Unfav except Bernie Sanders. Do you think Rubio loses to Sanders?
No. I have a 21 year old daughter who seems besotted. (Don’t tell her I said that, it’s insulting, I know) But she talks about how in tune he is with her age group. He knows slang I have to have explained.
She made me watch a comedy sketch Rubio did at a campaign stop and it was really funny! If he did that… he could play on the Democrat playing field and go on the talk shows and kill it.
(He promises we all get wings, and Mexico pays for them.)
One good comedy sketch goes viral on Youtube and he leaves Sanders in the dust.
It’s sad to overcome Socialism with looks and popularity, but what ever works.
In the end of course there’s no way to know until after it’s over but I wish he’d drop out because he just seems miserable – although the only person really having fun at this point is Trump.
On a side note, I never bought the Seventh Day Adventists loyalty theory – Carson may be a terrifically nice person but he’s a brain surgeon and a presidential candidate. You have to have a titanic ego to do either but to do both you have to be one of the most self-confident people ever.
That very statement is delusional. What makes him the best candidate in three decades? Certainly not his record, as he hasn’t been in the Senate long enough to have much of one, and what little he has is dominated by his Gang of Eight betrayal.
I continue to be amazed at the number of people that thought Rubio would be President because he looks like he could be on the cover of Tiger Beat with the rest of Menudo.
As an aside if Rubio does muscle everyone out but Trump and/or win the nomination his first action should be hiring Cruz’s ad team.
True. No matter which candidate wins Jeff Roe and Axiom Strategies should be involved in the general campaign.
Yeah, let’s support Rubio now, in the breach, instead of the guy savvy enough to hire that ad team. Why people support Rubio over Cruz is very strange–the only thing Rubio has over Cruz is the boyish good looks, an intangible pant-crease argument that should heap derision on anyone making it (and the fact that it doesn’t is yet another symptom of the rot that has set in the body politic). Rubio certainly does not have a better track record, campaign skill, experience, or debate performances. It leads one to question what people really want in a President, and the answer to that does not bode well for our immediate and long-term futures.
All supporting Rubio now is doing, like support Carson, is indirectly choosing Trump as the nominee. But, if you want a Democrat to win, vote in their primary.
I always prefer to place the chairs in blocks 6 across and 4 deep with untypically wide aisles and cross paths to permit easy movement with drinks and plates in hand. Perfect arrangement when traveling the North Atlantic.
Heh.
Gov. Nikki Haley just endorsed Rubio.
I’m surprised.
So how?
This makes me move Scenario 2 into the most likely slot.
Just yesterday she declined to endorse but anti-endorsed Trump. I thought she’d just leave it at that.
She has been named in a lawsuit aimed at stopping taxpayer-funded settlement of refugees in the state. With that in the news I thought she’d definitely stay away from endorsing.
I’m not surprised that it’s Rubio but I wouldn’t have been surprised by Bush or Cruz either. Merely surprised that she’s doing it at all.
No, but you watch… Rubio will be a close 3 to Cruz’s 2, and they’ll declare it a Rubio comeback, a’la Iowa.
They’d do that if Rubio was 10 points back as long as he was third.
Those aren’t the numbers I get. It’s true that the Emerson poll from the day before caught the last minute Trump/ Rubio/ Cruz shifts better, and I wouldn’t deny that later polls are generally more useful for fluid multipolar horse races. Nonetheless, PPP was spot on for Carson, while Emerson was 6 points off. They got the same for Bush and Santorum, PPP was a point more accurate for Paul, Huckabee and Christie, two points more accurate on Kasich, and one point down on Fiorina.
More importantly, valuations like that work better with larger datasets.
Right. Cruz’s numbers have come down, Trump has held steady, and favorables are a better head to head measure than multipolar measure.
If the election was today? It’s within the margin of error, slightly favoring Rubio. That favorability poll, though, was taken at the climax of one of the most intense negative ad campaigns in primary history. Bush hasn’t been able to match that elsewhere, so Rubio’s numbers have returned to considerable positivity (Cruz’s unfavorables are 50% higher, for perspective).
In a longer general election where Sanders was being attacked from the right, I’d expect his numbers to go down. It’s because Clinton is mostly attacking him on things that independents and conservatives don’t mind that he looks so good now.
What do you think has been going on in South Carolina for Cruz? The problem with all the candidates is that they get attacked in the general – I don’t see Rubio getting the kid gloves treatment from the press and the Democrats because despite what some of his critics on the right would have you believe he is not the (mainstream) media darling in the campaign.
Every politician gets attacked. The thing people like me see in Rubio is that he’s well prepared to rebuff those media attacks in a way that is politically effective. After all, he’s done that before.
Cruz’s favorable numbers have been going down nationally. I don’t know why. In South Carolina having TV ads pulled for falsity (and not by the campaign) probably didn’t help, but I don’t have any non-media insight.
I agree that there’s a reason msm newspapers mostly endorse Jeb or Kasich (or Christie for the Union Leader) even after it became clear that they were not likely victors. Rubio has shown that he can slog through the hostile media, both in Florida and nationally, but he’s not the media darling now and won’t be in the general. I don’t think that he’s hated in a Cruz/ Trump kind of way, though.
Agree with both Austin’s concern and Leigh’s response. I don’t think Rubio is as naive at this point as Romney or McCain. Whether that would be ultimately be enough, no one can say. But it is a better place to start from.
That would take some pretty significant movement in the polls. But I’d be quite happy to accept I dismissed it too early — and maybe, just maybe, today’s endorsement moves things in that direction.