Most pundits believe that Trump has a ceiling of support around his current levels of roughly 25 percent.
Nearly 32 percent of Republicans surveyed online said they backed Trump, up from 24 percent a week earlier, the opinion poll found. Trump had nearly double the support of his closest competitor, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who got 16 percent. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson was third at 8 percent.
I realize it’s an online poll but the phone polls have been quite similar to the online polls this cycle and Ipsos/Reuters polls have a very good reputation. This is also the first poll since Trump’s most recent immigration remarks.
I don’t know what Trump’s ceiling is but I can’t see any reason why it should be 25%, especially since he sometimes polls above 25%.
The GOP doesn’t really know how high Trump might conceivably poll if he keeps throwing red meat to the crazies. Now, that’s a hard motherfucking fact of life. But it’s a fact of life their ass is gonna have to get realistic about.
Rare Sanity
Don’t hate the playa, hate the game.
RareSanity
Don’t hate the playa, hate the game.
P.S.
I have a comment in moderation, typed my nym wrong. Feel free to disregard.
sigaba
30% of Republicans “strongly support” who’s ever polling first that week.
Comrade Dread
If he wants to, he can outspend his competition without any donors. He is tapping into an ugly nativist white supremacist warmongering streak that conservative media have been building up for decades. There’s a lot of people out there that want an authoritarian conservative leader to take back their country from the liberals, Marxists, (insert racial slur), etc. who they honestly believe are trying to destroy America.
They don’t want nuance. They don’t want compromise. They want bombast. They want bluster. They want extreme solutions.
Hell, I think he could easily be the Republican nominee.
satby
C’mon DougH, pundits aren’t right about anything. Why should they be right about Trump’s “ceiling” of support? If they got realistic,they’d have to admit how broken the Republican party is, and they would stick red hot pokers into their eyes before they’d admit that.
Trentrunner
It’s not Trump’s GOP ceiling we have to worry about.
It’s how many non-voters from the entire spectrum he pulls into the general.
All our certainty about the Dem-favorable national map hinges on past voting patterns.
But if those assumptions change–if Trump gets significant numbers of people to vote who otherwise wouldn’t…
…shit will rain, reign, and rein.
zmulls
Isn’t that 25% that pundits think his *national” ceiling? That if you polled Democrats and Independents too, his ceiling would be 25%?
His ceiling among registered Republicans will be higher, and his ceiling among Republicans who are planning to vote higher still.
I don’t see a conflict in the numbers.
Roger Moore
I interpret this to mean that most pundits don’t want to believe that Trump could do any better than he’s doing right now. Unless they can provide some actual evidence, this is just them passing off their personal preferences as reality.
Spike
How can 25% be the ceiling when we’ve known for years that 27% is the floor?
satby
Fyi I typed DougJ. Damn you autocorrect!!
Parmenides
I am rooting so hard for Trump. We would have a shot at texas. We could take the House. He would go so far down in flames it would take years for the GOP to recover. Two years but still.
redshirt
27% +-3%
redshirt
@Parmenides: Me too. I don’t fear the Trump, but rather rejoice as he burns down the Republican Party.
Roger Moore
@Trentrunner:
It also matters which ones. Trump could be a gift to voter registration campaigns among Latinos. Nasty Republican attacks on immigration were a huge motivating factor in getting Latinos to register and vote here in California.
greennotGreen
@Parmenides: Really? This is the country that voted for George W. Bush in 2004 – at least partly because he failed to protect the country from terrorists.
sigaba
@Parmenides: 2020 is the brass ring, so you guys can redo the districts, 2016 would be nice but it’d be hard to sustain. Winning a bunch of house seats with 40% of the vote is a very mixed blessing, it’s a pretty awful outcome.
gian
I’m hoping for Trump-Sheen for the #winning
redshirt
@greennotGreen: W. was WAY better a candidate than Trump. Also a sitting President in 2004.
raven
Come on Tiger!
piratedan
just hope that this mania isn’t contagious to the population at large….
redshirt
@raven: I’m rooting for Tiger too. I want to see him make at least one more run, especially against the current crop of outstanding young golfers.
rikyrah
All About Eve on Netflix streaming!
Germy Shoemangler
@rikyrah: fasten your seatbelts!
Kay
They’re just pretending it isn’t happening:
There were 3800 registered for the Koch Bros event and 3000 outside, protesting the Koch Bros event.
raven
Don’t cry for Jimmy Carter
rikyrah
@Trentrunner:
That cuts both ways. I believe that dogwhistles help lull those on our side into a “oh, they are not THAT BAD ” sleep.
raven
@redshirt: They had to print 47,000 extra tickets because of him. All the assholes can pontificate about his “behavior” but he’s made tins if money for many associated with the game.
Lihtox
@greennotGreen: Yeah, but Dubya seemed like a nice guy to people who weren’t paying attention. All of our recent Presidents had that quality, a certain charm. Trump has no charm, so it’s really hard to compare him with Dubya.
Another Holocene Human
@Kay: Don’t they always?
“Move along. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”
redshirt
@raven: He’s still a superstar. Who cares if he sleeps around?
raven
@redshirt: Ashely Madison does.
Botsplainer
Hearing and seeing way too many people that I know saying “I don’t agree with everything he says, but he says what he thinks and he can’t be bought or controlled”. Thing is, the man is shit stupid and blurting the last 40 years of conservative dog whistles into a megaphone – blurting it at a population that’s been conditioned by decades of propaganda to have those tendencies.
I’m pushing back, but having some difficulty.
Hitler, after all, wasn’t talking rail cars or Zyklon B in 1933 and 1934.
WereBear
@Lihtox: W ran as a “compassionate conservative.” Trump fans won’t go for that, and I can’t see moderates going for Trump.
Gindy51
@Comrade Dread: They’re repeating a history they neglected to read in school….
dlw32
@Roger Moore: That’s a good point Mr Moore, but the article does appear to be talking about the primaries. I think they may just be wrong.
But I also think you’re right, in the general, Trump does have a low ceiling.
redshirt
@raven: I’d pile on Duggar because he sells himself as a holier than thou Christian solider. Tiger’s a good looking superstar wealthy elite athlete – he should have been sleeping around!
redshirt
@WereBear: And amazingly in retrospect, Bush was a “compassionate conservative” compared to these vile swine that are now running.
raven
@redshirt: Yea I don’t think it means zip but it is interesting to see how he hit the wall in his golf game.
Bobby Thomson
@zmulls: way too low either way. If he is the Republican nominee he will get votes from people who deny it now. The same thing happens every four years.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
I agree. After all, it’s not like they don’t have a lot of experience passing off their personal preferences as reality.
danielx
@Lihtox:
I’m sure that Donald Trump is capable of exhibiting great charm to anyone he considers to be his financial and intellectual equal – to be sure, a short list. His basic shtick with everyone else is “I’m Donald Trump and you’re not, therefore you’re like shit on my shoes.” The Republican base doesn’t care, they love him for saying stuff nobody else would dare to say about women, black people, brown people and pretty much anyone else who isn’t white and/or makes less than six figures a year.
Another Holocene Human
Okay, so anti-Semitism in progressive spaces. I thought it was just on Tumblr, which sucks, but it’s on twitter as well.
It’s often couched as “concern” about Palestine or “solidarity” with POC (in Palestine) but is obviously anti-Semitic by being utterly able to distinguish one Jew from another Jew … just like the Tsar taught us in 1901. All Jews are party to the Hive Mind. That’s just science.
At a time when very real anti-Semitic violence is threatening Jews in continental Europe, especially the very marginalized North African Jewish minority in France, this kind of bilge is even more contemptible.
redshirt
@raven: Yeah. I’d love to read a book that really describes what happened to Tiger during that period. I know he kept messing with his swing and had a series of injuries, but he went from the invincible number 1 in the world to… what? He’s like in the high 200’s now?
Botsplainer
@Comrade Dread:
I’m thinking that a Trump presidency results in some smoking craters where a few American cities once stood and an end to the comfortable lifestyles of the retirees and heroic paper shuffling insurance salesmen, financial planners, real estate agents, developers and insurance executives who are so eager to see a “take charge” blustering fool like Donald Trump in the Oval Office. It would almost be worth it, except you know that the detonated cities would be blue, and not some festering wingnut shithole.
Chris
@Bobby Thomson:
True. In the same way the “base” held its nose and voted for McCain and Romney, the “establishment” will hold its nose and go all in behind Trump if it comes to that, as will 99% of the voting public (even those few who think of themselves as “moderate”). The hatred for the Dems will always overwhelm all other considerations.
DougJ
@zmulls:
They mean in the primary, they make that clear in the next paragraph.
BD of MN
@Comrade Dread: This… Here’s a friend of a friend from FB this morning:
“At least he calls it like it is and none of this politically correct BS like all other politicians. ALL politicians have one agenda, getting rich. They do not have the well being of the American people in mind. The government has been a complete failure and its time to try something new. Time to run the country like a business in this global economy. Im sorry that Trump may be a little harsh for you, but his ideas are what most white Americans either secretly or openly feel.TRUMP 2016….”
I gave up commenting on politics on FB years ago, but comments like these weaken the resolve…
raven
@redshirt: I guess it depends on today. I thought he had to win to advance to the FedEx but someone said he could make it in if the has second too?
Another Holocene Human
@redshirt:
He was not compassionate in any way, shape, or form (actually, the word was a dog whistle to the religious right), but he did avoid personally putting his fingers on the worst kind of racist/tribalist/nativist crap with regards to domestic policy. (Yes, his operatives DID run that “black baby” thing in SC.)
I lost all respect for him when he put party over country in 2010 and refused to speak out against the Summer of Hate, while Republican Arab Americans–people whose money and votes he had assiduously courted–dangled in the wind.
Roger Moore
@redshirt:
His wife apparently disagreed with you on that point, and her opinion is the one that mattered.
raven
@Roger Moore: She did ok.
Another Holocene Human
@BD of MN: Republicans always say “all politicians are alike”. Now, if you’ve “walked the halls” you quickly find out that, no, they’re not, but GOPers must believe this, or else they might be doing something terrible by putting the worst demagogue, baiter, rabble-rouser, or crook up in office.
redshirt
@raven: Second will work as long as he’s the only one in second place. Otherwise he’s got to win it. Can’t wait to watch.
redshirt
@Another Holocene Human: “Compared to today’s Rethugs”.
redshirt
@Roger Moore: He was a fool to get married.
Another Holocene Human
@Roger Moore: She got hers, and I seem to recall her taking out her frustrations with a golf club and his car.
It’s not that he wasn’t being shitty, but he wasn’t running around trying to legislate morality.
Another Holocene Human
@redshirt: Or to get married to someone who wasn’t okay with him bird-dogging it around. I’m sure he wanted the companionship and stuff, just wasn’t about to jump on the monogamy train. And that’s okay! Relationships are difficult and stuff.
raven
Hole in one!
Another Holocene Human
@Botsplainer: If Donald bulldozed some banks I’m sure purplish red Jacksonville would be a casualty, and that couldn’t happen to a better cultural sink.
(Their downtown is the most jesus’d up of any ville I’ve been in with a population over 12,000.)
eta: as long as we’re sharing fantasies here; ftr I don’t support the laying waste of cities
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
I’ve always liked Jim Galloway’s political commentary, but I never thought of him as a poet. What a magnificent column. Thanks for linking.
Another Holocene Human
@Lihtox: My late great aunt who worked for an oil company thought Dubya was the bee’s knees but I found him the opposite of charming. Never met him in person but probably would have found him too tactile (this is based on that infamous “drunk” video of him from a party? fundraiser? in Texas).
Roger Moore
@raven:
She may have come out OK, but I bet she still would have preferred a faithful husband to a favorable divorce.
raven
@Roger Moore: Maybe so.
Robin G.
I usually try to see nuance in all things (persons as opposed to people, etc.), but it’s just too clear at this point: Donald Trump is a racist bigot, and if you support him, you too are a racist bigot. There is no other side, or weasel-way out. There is no reason to mince words or sugar-coat it for an audience. Trump supporters are bad people, and I am ashamed to share a country with them.
I’m super-popular on Facebook right now.
redshirt
@raven: Who got the hole in one?
redshirt
I’m still laughing at Barack owning Trump during that celebrity TV event or whatever it was many years ago, all the while Obams knew special forces were closing in on OBL. So badass.
raven
So now it goes OFF the Golf Channel and doesn’t come on CBS until 3!!!!
maybe not
Botsplainer
They’ll fall right in line because libruls.
Another Holocene Human
@Robin G.: I think Altemeyer’s “The Authoritarians” describes Donald Trump very well. He is a “social dominator” and social dominators express sexist and racist (kyriarchical) views and believe that everyone else shares them.
WereBear
@redshirt: Sponsors like respectable married men.
Amir Khalid
@redshirt:
The 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner.
NonyNony
@DougJ
Okay – look. There’s far too much chicken littling going on. Online polls are crap and continue be crap even after a variety of pollsters have tried to tweak them to make them less crappy. For one thing their ability to separate “likely voters” from the mix of “all possible voters” is horrible. For now, if you don’t want to ignore them entirely, at least take them with a “YOOOOGE” grain of salt. You might be able to assume that they’re a good metric of what “loudmouthed and opinionated people on the Internet who think there opinion is important and needs to be heard” think (i.e. political bloggers and those of us who comment on political blogs), because those are still the kinds of respondents these polls get – especially this far out from the election. Concentrate on the phone polling which has a historic record of being at least somewhat close to being able to match public opinion, they know how to randomize the sample appropriately, and they have better techniques for figuring out how to filter out the likely voters from the pools.
Also – this far out from the first primary, polling is fucking useless anyway. Rudy Giulianni was the odds-on favorite to win Iowa at this point in 2008 and was the guy to be worried about. Look how that turned out for him.
redshirt
@WereBear: That’s true, but that has nothing to do with the staggering drop in his golf game since that incident.
redshirt
Also too, FSM help me I’m enjoying playing and watching golf. 24 year old me would punch current me in the nose.
Amir Khalid
As far as anyone knows, the Donald’s support might evaporate on the morning of the first primary. Or in this presidential campaign he might get only as far as the Republican nomination. Or, who can say, maybe the Oval Office itself. I don’t think there’s really any way to know.
Splitting Image
@Another Holocene Human:
There is a lot of overlap between people who dismiss all politicians as being all alike and people who dismiss an entire racial or religious group as being all alike. It’s the same mental process for both. First you say that they are all alike, then you assign the worst possible motives to them all. Finally you point out that you approve of one or two who are “not like the rest”, and that proves you’re not a bigot.
In the case of politicians, non-bigotry can be defined as being a free-thinking moderate independent. Who votes party-line Republican, but shame on you for pointing that out.
Iowa Old Lady
@Amir Khalid: It’s a long time until the election. It’s possible Trump will get bored or the public and the MSM will.
Debbie
@Kay:
I’d say Johnny’s dream of a VP ended this weekend.
BobS
@Another Holocene Human: The Fallacy of Rising Anti-Semitism
Baud
If liberals are afraid of Trump, we need to just give up politics and take up origami or something.
Amir Khalid
@Iowa Old Lady:
The Donald’s running against competitors, including Rick Perry, each of whom thinks themselves quite capable of presidenting. I think it quite possible that he too might have said to himself, “Hey, I can do this! I can be president!”
WereBear
@redshirt: Golf is half nerve; it’s how players can dominate for longer periods than more physically demanding sports.
If he has to mentally compensate more, there’s a limit to that.
Amir Khalid
@Splitting Image:
I believe that there are no saints in politics. Is that different?
SoupCatcher
I wonder if the San Francisco Chronicle is going to follow the New York Times’ lead and go after Clinton. Today’s front page had this on-the-fold headline, “Dems’ nightmare if Clinton tanks.”
I guess they didn’t want to wait for any silly little things like caucuses or primaries.
Baud
@SoupCatcher:
NYT = Fox News when it comes to the Clintons.
SoupCatcher
@Baud:
Yeah, the New York Times is already down the rabbit hole and I would’ve expected that headline from them. From the Chron, however, that was surprising.
Iowa Old Lady
@Amir Khalid: I think they all underestimate Obama to such an extent that they believe if he can be president, they can.
Kay
@Debbie:
I disagree. People told me the same thing about Romney- that the Tea Party hated him so he wouldn’t be the nominee. I was looking at Jeb Bush’s Twitter after this event- it’s him and the GOP “establishment”.
I’d still put money on Jeb Bush and John Kasich is in the same wing of the Party. John Kasich’s main problem is he’s redundant as long as Bush is in. Those two will join forces, if they haven’t already. They may as well be the same person.
Josie
@Kay: So you believe the establishment wing of the Republican party will pull it off again? I have been wondering about this – will they be able to force an establishment candidate on an angry base one more time? What makes you think they can? I respect your political instincts and would like to hear your rationale.
Chris
@Robin G.:
I used to look for nuance all over the place in U.S. politics, took me years to resign myself to the fact that no, the GOP is not going through a phase; they’re all either insane, ill-intentioned, or both. I’ve been basically at that point for years by now, though, the teabagger freakout of 2009-2010 sealed the deal for me.
The unfriend button is your friend. I just used it again last night, this time on a person I haven’t talked to in years who was sharing a picture of two SS officers next to a picture of two pro-choicers in the exact same pose with some accompanying witticism or other.
Woodrowfan
@Robin G.: I’d friend you for that!
Kay
@Josie:
I do, because the Money Party has the most power and they’ll get the lunatic states. Those are a given. They could put up a stuffed panda and they would carry Alabama, and they all know it.
Another Holocene Human
@BobS: Wow, what a heap of disingenuous garbage. Shame on Counterpunch for publishing it.
Eljai
@SoupCatcher: I knew who the reporter for that story was before I even clicked on the link. She’s one of the laziest so-called journalists I’ve ever read, and she’s frequently wrong. If her name is attached to an article, I’d skip it.
F
Short of him coming out of the closet or devouring a live baby at the next debate, there’s no reason that Trump won’t be around all the way through Iowa.
inkadu
@F: Correction: A white baby.
Chris
@F:
You mean an unborn baby? If it’s been born, he could still get away with it.
TerryC
@redshirt: @redshirt: “He’s still a superstar. Who cares if he sleeps around?” But … such poor taste!Ugh.
brad
Let’s do some quick, back of the envelope, math based on that all too accurate crazification number. So we start with 27%, minus 2-3% for those who are too fringe/bizarre to vote Repub, and another 2-3% who vote Dem for whatever bizarre reason. Rounding up for simplicity, that leaves a clean 20% who are unambiguously Repub. Gallup polls seem to put R party identification (not counting leaners as unlikely to vote in primaries) as between 25-30%.
So his ceiling would seem to be in the 60s, if not higher, in terms of support in the primaries.
rikyrah
@Josie:
I believe that Jeb will be the nominee. I just want Trump to stay long enough to force them to stop speaking in Luntz approved language.
Zinsky
I think Bernie may be the last man (or person) standing, come November of 2016!
redshirt
@Zinsky: Describe how this will happen.
Schlemazel
@rikyrah:
The real hope is that JEB! does not speak that way but Dump continues to. JEB! already is making a hash out of his public statements so as to not hurt his standing with the crazies – and that hurts him with the crazies. If JEB! gets the nom the crazies will see him as a sell out and a phoney (hey! They are 1/2 right!) and will stay home to teach the GOP a lesson. I hope
dww44
@Bobby Thomson: Too true. Sadly for the country. All my Repub relatives and friends will vote for whoever is on the GOP ticket. More proof that there are few independent voters out there. I for one will vote for whoever is on the DEM ticket as it will be a cold day in July before I could ever vote for any Republican at any level.
.@SiubhanDuinne: Galloway’s column gets published in a lot of the rural weeklies that I come across. I genuinely don’t care for his cutesy smart mouthed style, this column not withstanding. In order to burnish his “neutral to right leaning” bona fides, he smears Democrats, particularly at the national level. Like Elizabeth Warren, who is no where near as extreme as she’s made out to be by the likes of him and others.
About the only somewhat progressive policy I’ve seen Gallaway make a full throated support of are public schools and public school teachers. That’s because he’s related to some. Otherwise, he ‘s a pseudo cynical neutral political observer in a state that’s a wholly owned subsidiary of the GOP, i.e. his bread and butter..
sm*t cl*de
Why waste time with quaint ideas like “evidence” when you can appeal to your impression that all the other evidence-free opinionaters have reached a consensus?
catclub
@Chris:
It did not in 2008 when Palin made a difference. I think Trump could easily be viewed as worse than Palin as an actual president, by many undecided voters.
Nathan Tyree
I don’t have the link in front of me, but I have seen polls that show Trump also leads in the second choice category. It seems like those factors suggest a ceiling of above 50% which is bad news for the GOP as a party. If a blatantly unserious, openly racist, obviously stupid man can gain support of something like a majority of the base of their party, then it is unlikely that they can ever win at the Presidential level.
BobS
@Another Holocene Human: That’s a convincing argument you make.
Thoughtful Today
!
Right-wingers love flamboyant actors.
Keith G
@SoupCatcher: It seems that reporters for a variety of outlets are getting information about meetings and discussions surrounding the topic of “what if….”. These things tend to happen so I bet many of the reports start from a truthful premise. Hillary has strong and deep support from Democratic leaders, but that doesn’t meant that they have forgotten some erratic campaigning decision making in the past.
When Vice President Biden Jr. on Saturday gets Senator Warren to his stop by Washington residence for a meeting (out of the way for both people who are otherwise on holiday) folks tend to wonder.
Maybe it was a discussion on the future of Amtrack.
I know folks here seem to get quite exorcised about this, as I found out yesterday, but this is not about being Chicken Little. This, as far as I can fathom, is how politics gets played. Strong contenders assert their leadership and if their actions, or other events, cause a hiccup the assertion of that leadership gets questioned. That’s why it is a good thing to sidestep problematic actions.
It seems that as things stand now Hillary will get through this. Yes there are media outlets and reporters that have it out for her. We all have known this for years now. That is why she needs to run the smartest game possible. She will get no breaks at this stage.
\When her polling number show a rebound, or at least stabilization, Biden will probably back down, but this is on Hillary – which she seems to realize, as there are reports that she is interrupting her vacation to…errr…run for office.
redshirt
Hillz-rod should ignore the haters and run a hip, modern 21st century campaign.
mike in dc
Based on the “absolutely would not support if he were the nominee” polling, I’d say his ceiling is 100-that number, or around 40-45%. Which is more than enough to secure the nomination in a crowded field.
mclaren
Maybe the reporters were talking about 25% to 27% of the general electorate. I think Trump probably has a hard ceiling of about 27% max of the general public in a general election…the same ceiling you get with, say, Ron Paul or Huckabee in a general election.
32% of likely Republican primary voters is a very different number from 32% of all voters in a general election.
mclaren
@Keith G:
“The power of Christ compels you! The power of Christ compels you!”
Really, that’s my favorite typo this week.
But I think you mean “folks here tend to quite exercised about this…”
Considering the level of some of the commentary on this site, though, exorcism might be more appropriate. (Hint: “You are a dog-fucking piece of shit of the lowest possible denomination” is not a productive addition to the conversation. Yes, raven, I’m talking about you.)