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Who’s Next?

The establishment-friendly field winnows, but outsiders collectively dominate the polling.
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With Walker out, I assume Chris Christie is ordering his staffers not to answer the phones.

But seriously: the debates appear to be doing their job in winnowing the field down from a huge number to a more reasonable-sized field. Kasich impressed in the first debate – and he’s still standing. Rubio impressed in the second debate – and he’s still standing. Perry couldn’t move the needle, and Walker moved it the wrong way – and they are out. Jeb . . . well, he’s a Bush, so he’s got more rope. But not an infinite amount thereof: at some point, if he can’t consistently outpoll his fellow Floridian, he’ll come under pressure to drop out and consolidate the establishment-acceptable vote.

The only problem is, that vote looks to be no more than a quarter to a third of the total, at least at this point.

Take the three non-politician candidates: Trump, Carson and Fiorina. Carson and Fiorina do not ring quite the alarm bells that Trump does among the establishment, but I am assuming that nobody among the party’s leadership or major donors is anything less than appalled at the prospect of being stuck with a complete political novice like Carson, or a disastrous failure of a CEO (and failed Senate candidate to boot) like Fiorina at the top of the ticket. But collectively, they pull in more than 50% – not only nationally (54% average across the most recent 3 polls), but in each of Iowa (56%), New Hampshire (54%), South Carolina (58%) and even Florida (58%) where Bush and Rubio are native sons.

Then, add to that total the vote for those candidates with actual experience whom the establishment still likely finds unacceptable: bomb-thrower Ted Cruz, one-time libertarian gadfly Rand Paul, and Duggar family publicist Mike Huckabee. That group collectively polls 15% nationally, 15% in Iowa, 12% in New Hampshire, 11% in South Carolina, and 8% in Florida.

I’ll call the rest of the field establishment-friendly: Bush, Rubio, Kasich, Christie – that crowd. I’ll include in that group hopeless-cause candidates – Graham and Pataki and Jindal and so forth – because if they weren’t hopeless they’d be acceptable, and therefore I assume their votes could readily be won by another “normal” candidate more readily than, say, Cruz’s or Trump’s.

That group – all together – polls at less than 25% nationally, as well as in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, rising to 32% only in the Bush-Rubio state.

And those numbers haven’t moved all that much – particularly not the national ones. There’s been a lot of volatility in just the last couple of weeks. But the numbers for the “outsiders” versus “insiders” have been pretty stable.

Does that mean that consolidation won’t be enough to put one establishment-acceptable candidate over the top? Not necessarily – but it does mean that that candidate, whoever he is, will need to be able to do more than consolidate those voters already showing a willingness to vote for an “insider.”

Who would you bet is best-placed to do that?

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