538: "Candidates In Donald Trump’s Position Have A Terrible Track Record"

[Attorney in Texas]

from the number crunchers at the 538 blog:

Polls show Donald Trump leading in the Republican presidential primary. He’s leading nationally. He’s leading in Iowa. He’s leading in New Hampshire. That’s right — Donald Trump may end up winning … “Polling Leader for the Summer of 2015.”

Is that a worthwhile prize? Well, it depends. This may be an obvious point, but much of the media seems to be ignoring it: Leading the polls with 20 percent of the vote is not the same as leading with 40 percent or 50 percent or 60 percent.
...
no summer front-runner with less than 33 percent in Iowa (six in total) went on to win the nomination. Trump’s at 19.3 percent in the Real Clear Politics average.
...
Trump’s New Hampshire standing is nothing outstanding either. ... He’s at 24.5 percent right now in the Real Clear Politics average, which (when rounded) is equal to the all-time lowest summer leader in the nine New Hampshire primaries we have polling for (we don’t have summer survey data for either party in 1988 or for the Democrats in 1992). The only two summer polling leaders with less than 30 percent in New Hampshire lost the nomination.

[longship]

1. Terrible argument!

None of the GOP candidates are over 25% because there are fucking 17 of them. When was the last time that happened? (I mean other than the CA recall.)

It is horrible statistics to extrapolate from a single case. Shame on 538!

Sheesh!

[Attorney in Texas]

2. That point was expressly addressed in the article. Trump will not be the nominee. Carry on.

[longship]

6. Well, if there are 17 candidates, likely nobody is going to get 25%!!!

And if they do, it is very likely that they WILL be the front runner.

The issue is not that Trump has only about 25% of the poll. It's that there are 17 fucking clowns in the clown car. And given Trump's character, and that of the other 16, I do not think anybody can predict who will, or will not, get the nomination. Especially this far out.

538 is full of shit. But it sure is going to be a lot of fun.

[Attorney in Texas]

7. You're going to argue statistics with a professional statistician with a shockingly accurate success

rate?

That's probably all the data I need.

[longship]

8. Well, not that accurate this far out.

Especially with 17 in the clown car.

We will likely have a cage match, with throwing chairs, before anybody is going to sort this out by any statistics. Human behavior is just too damned messy. And, I case you haven't noticed, there are 17 in the clown car and the top news network on the planet is FoxNews. It sounds more like a Zombie Plague than a primary presidential election to me.

But I will demure on your issue, for now. But I reserve my right to change my mind if the situation changes.

[Attorney in Texas]

9. 17 is just a number. If you discount Gilmore, Pataki, Jindal, Graham, etc. (as the Republicans have)

and get the field down to perhaps 8 or 9 candidates who have at least a 1 in 20 chance. The other 8 or 9 candidates are just background noise (those polling at 0% to less than 2%).

Once you eliminate the background noise, the field is not very different in quantity than the 1988 Democratic field, the 2000 Republican field, or the 2008 Republican field.

[Attorney in Texas]

3. more data: "Donald Trump Is Winning The Polls — And Losing The Nomination"

link

Twelve years ago, in August 2003, Joe Lieberman led in most polls of the Democratic primary. Eight years ago, in August 2007, Rudy Giuliani maintained a clear lead in polls of Republicans, while Hillary Clinton led in polls of the Democratic nomination contest. Four years ago, in August 2011, Mitt Romney began with the lead in polls of Republican voters, but he would be surpassed by the end of the month by Rick Perry, the first of four Republican rivals who would at some point overtake Romney in national polling averages.
...
But the problem isn’t just that the national polls at this stage in the race lack empirical power to predict the nomination; it’s also that they describe a fiction. I don’t mean to suggest that Donald Trump’s support in the polls is “fake.” I have no doubt that some people really love him or that he’d be the favorite if you held a national, winner-take-all Republican primary tomorrow. However, the “election” these polls describe is hypothetical in at least five ways:

*They contemplate a vote today, but we’re currently 174 days from the Iowa caucuses.
*They contemplate a national primary, but states vote one at a time or in small groups.
*They contemplate a race with 17 candidates, but several candidates will drop out before Iowa and several more will drop out before the other states vote.
*They contemplate a winner-take-all vote, but most states are not winner-take-all.
*They contemplate a vote among all Republican-leaning registered voters or adults, but in fact only a small fraction of them will turn out for primaries and caucuses.
...
Another trade-off comes from entrenching your appeal with a narrow segment of the electorate at the expense of broadening your coalition. I’ve seen a lot written about how Trump’s candidacy heralds a new type of populism. If it does, this type of populism isn’t actually very popular. Trump’s overall favorability ratings2 are miserable, about 30 percent favorable and 60 percent unfavorable, and they haven’t improved (whatever gains he’s made among Republicans have been offset by his declines among independents and Democrats). To some extent, the 30 percent may like Trump precisely because they know the 60 percent don’t like him. More power to the 30 percent: I have plenty of my own issues with the political establishment. But running a campaign that caters to (for lack of a better term) contrarians is exactly how you ensure that you’ll never reach a majority.

[Eleanors38]

4. The far right has its Jon Stewart on.

Most people who say they support Trump always do so with a grin, like they just told a fart joke. It's the old P.C. crap all over again.

[TreasonousBastard]

5. Another small point is that asd we get closer to the conventions...

Trump has no serious political organization or loyalties/favors to call in.

We'll soon get to the point where we have money, voting and power blocs that the candidates will woo, many of whom are already well known to those blocs. As much as we might hate the Koch brothers, at least a dozen of the R candidates have been trying to suck up to them for years, and for good reason. But not Trump, and how far does anyone think he'd get if he tried? How's his organizing and connections in the Southwest? Or the West Coast, where they told him to fuck off and go back to New York?

Trump's 20% is from the disaffected who don't even get it up for Tea Party bullshit any more and the ignorant who like the show he puts on.

Actual voters?