Feel free to ignore all those the early polls, Marco Rubio is pulling ahead where it really matters.
With Election Day 2015 come and gone now is probably a good time to take a survey of where things stand in the race for the Republican nomination for president. Most reporters in the political media are continuing to highlight visible poll leaders like Donald Trump and Ben Carson, especially when they engage in antics like the latest debate blow up that make for great copy.
But the cases against Trump, Carson, or anyone else like them remains as solid as ever. Simply put, in the modern era people who have never held elected office before don’t win presidential nominations. Furthermore polling at this point in a nominations cycle simply isn’t predictive of who ends up winning the nomination in the end. Meaning it shouldn’t be too surprising that Trump’s high poll rating probably just reflect the media’s infatuation with him, and don’t say anything about voter preference at all.
This doesn’t mean that presidential nominations can’t be predicted in advance though. In fact public endorsements from other party actors, what Nate Silver likes to call “The Endorsement Primary”, are a pretty good predictor of who gets the nomination in the end. Which as Jonathan Bernstein pointed out is exactly why Rubio’s chances are looking better and better:
Rubio has picked up his first two endorsements from his fellow U.S. senators–Colorado’s Cory Gardner on Monday and Montana’s Steve Daines on Tuesday. After getting off to a slow start in high-visibility endorsements, Rubio has been on a roll for a while now. He has nailed down seven members of the House since Sept. 21. Over the same period, the other 14 Republican candidates had 10 new House endorsements combined.
This shift to Rubio is happening at other levels, too. Last Tuesday, I counted 67 state legislators in Rubio’s column; a short week later that number was reported to be up to 80.
He still trails Bush in total endorsements. But remember the 2008 Democratic contest. Hillary Clinton’s strong party connections allowed her to take an early but not decisive lead among party actors, and then Barack Obama spent the fall of 2007 beginning to catch up. And Bush’s early lead has been far less impressive than Clinton’s was then. A lot more free-agent party actors remain available and could wind up with Rubio.
This hardly means Jeb Bush is toast just yet. After all he still has a lot of resources in the form of money, insider support, and political networks to stay alive for a while. Plus Rubio could easily become a target for the rest of the baseball team sized Republican field to try and tear down, especially in upcoming debates, a role Jeb and Trump have largely been playing so far. But Rubio’s chances are looking a lot better than they were a few weeks ago.
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