GOP Field Hasn’t Been This Split in 40 Years

Five Thirty Eight ^ | 03/21/2014 | HARRY ENTEN

[SeekAndFind]

The George Washington Bridge scandal has subtly reshaped the contest for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, hurting New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s chances and leaving the field without a clear front-runner. The pack is now huddled in the low teens, according to polls of GOP voters.

How rare is such an evenly divided field? I checked polling since 1976, the first year in which both the Republican and Democratic nominations were decided completely by voters and not by party leaders.

It’s rare.

In surveys conducted from January through March of the preceding midterm election year (so for the 2012 election, we’re looking at polls from Jan. 1 through March 31 of 2010), the Republican atop the polls has always averaged at least 23 percent of the vote.

But not this year. Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and a presidential aspirant in 2008, leads current polling with 14.8 percent. Even if we include Democratic nomination contests, 14.8 percent basically ties for the lowest leader on record (right near the 15 percent Mario Cuomo had in 1992).

The table below shows the top five potential candidates by election year according to polling averages from the first three months of the preceding midterm year. Some candidates were only included in some of the nomination polls conducted during that period. (For some early years, we have only one or two polls. The years left blank for either party represent cycles when there was no polling data.)

	GOP candidate	Incl./ Tot. Polls	Avg.	DEM candidate	Incl./ Tot. Polls	Avg.
1976	Gerald Ford	(1/1)	24.0	Ted Kennedy	(2/2)	31.5
	Ronald Reagan	(1/1)	20.0	George Wallace	(2/2)	20.0
	Nelson Rockefeller	(1/1)	18.0	Henry Jackson	(2/2)	12.0
	John Connally	(1/1)	9.0	Edmund Muskie	(2/2)	9.0
	Charles Percy	(1/1)	8.0	George McGovern	(2/2)	6.0
1980	Ronald Reagan	(1/1)	45.0	Ted Kennedy	(1/1)	36.0
	Gerald Ford	(1/1)	35.0	Jimmy Carter	(1/1)	29.0
	Howard Baker	(1/1)	7.0	Jerry Brown	(1/1)	12.0
	John Connally	(1/1)	5.0	Walter Mondale	(1/1)	8.0
	George Bush / Bob Dole	(1/1)	2.0	Henry Jackson	(1/1)	5.0
1984				Ted Kennedy	(1/1)	32.0
				Walter Mondale	(1/1)	20.0
				John Glenn	(1/1)	13.0
				Jerry Brown	(1/1)	7.0
				Robert Byrd	(1/1)	5.0
1988	George H.W. Bush	(2/2)	31.0	Gary Hart	(2/2)	32.1
	Bob Dole	(2/2)	12.5	Mario Cuomo	(2/2)	14.8
	Howard Baker	(2/2)	11.9	Lee Iacocca	(2/2)	13.0
	Alexander Haig	(2/2)	6.2	Jesse Jackson	(2/2)	6.7
	Jack Kemp	(2/2)	5.0	Bill Bradley	(2/2)	6.0
1992	George H.W. Bush	(1/1)	65.0	Mario Cuomo	(1/1)	15.0
	Bob Dole	(1/1)	7.0	Michael Dukakis	(1/1)	13.0
	Liz Dole	(1/1)	4.0	Jesse Jackson	(1/1)	14.0
	Dan Quayle	(1/1)	5.0	Llloyd Bentsen	(1/1)	9.0
	Jack Kemp	(1/1)	4.0	Gary Hart / Bill Bradley	(1/1)	4.0
1996	Bob Dole	(2/2)	24.5
	Jack Kemp	(2/2)	14.5
	Ross Perot	(1/2)	12.0
	Dan Quayle	(2/2)	9.5
	Dick Cheney	(2/2)	8.5
2000	George W. Bush	(3/3)	23.3	Al Gore	(1/1)	45.0
	Colin Powell	(1/3)	16.0	Bill Bradley	(1/1)	14.0
	Liz Dole	(3/3)	12.0	Dick Gephardt	(1/1)	8.0
	Jack Kemp	(3/3)	8.3	Bob Kerrey	(1/1)	4.0
	Steve Forbes	(3/3)	7.0
2004				Al Gore	(8/8)	29.6
				Hillary Clinton	(5/8)	17.8
				Joe Lieberman	(7/8)	8.1
				Tom Daschle	(8/8)	7.6
				Bill Bradley	(5/8)	7.2
2008	Rudy Giuliani	(4/4)	26.5	Hillary Clinton		39.8
	John McCain	(4/4)	24.5	John Kerry		12.8
	Condi Rice	(1/4)	22.0	Al Gore		13.7
	Newt Gingrich	(3/4)	6.7	John Edwards		13.5
	Bill Frist	(4/4)	4.5	Joe Biden		5.0td>
2012	Mitt Romney	(4/4)	23.3
	Sarah Palin	(4/4)	17.5
	Mike Huckabee	(4/4)	15.8
	Newt Gingrich	(3/4)	8.0
	Ron Paul	(3/4)	7.0
2016	Mike Huckabee	(6/9)	14.8	Hillary Clinton	(5/5)	67.0
	Chris Christie	(9/9)	13.0	Joe Biden	(5/5)	10.2
	Jeb Bush	(9/9)	12.2	Liz Warren	(4/5)	6.8
	Rand Paul	(9/9)	11.1	Andrew Cuomo	(4/5)	3.0
	Paul Ryan	(9/9)	10.9	Cory Booker	(2/5)	2.5

While the GOP is more divided than usual this cycle, Democrats are more united. Hillary Clinton has 67 percent in the polls, more than the top five Republicans’ average support combined. Clinton is polling stronger than any contender in the modern era on either side, including incumbent presidents George H.W. Bush in 1992 and Jimmy Carter in 1980. For non-incumbents, Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Al Gore in 2000, each with 45 percent support at this point, come closest to Clinton.

Meanwhile, on the Republican side, the difference between Huckabee and Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who ranks fifth according to polls, is only 4 percentage points. That’s by far the most tightly packed the top five candidates have been in our sample. No other year has a first-to-fifth gap less than 10 points.

The difference between first and fifth on the Democratic side is 65 percentage points. That’s the widest gap on record.

Early polling doesn’t always predict how well a candidate will do. Rudy Giuliani was ahead at this time in the 2008 cycle, but he didn’t win a single primary. Even in years when the leader at this point in the cycle went on to win the nomination, the actual percentage earned by the winner didn’t match the early polling. Bob Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000 weren’t that far ahead at this point, and they won their primaries by a mile.

On the Democratic side, one look at the chart and you see that many eventual nominees (like Barack Obama in 2008) weren’t in the top five at this point — some weren’t even polled.

Polls conducted more than two years before a presidential election don’t tell us all that much about the eventual vote percentages. But they do tell us that the Democratic and Republican fields for 2016 each look very unusual at this point in the race. The Republican picture is unusually muddled, and the Democratic picture is unusually clear.

[Colonel_Flagg]

How rare is such an evenly divided field? I checked polling since 1976, the first year in which both the Republican and Democratic nominations were decided completely by voters and not by party leaders.

If the author thinks the last two Republican nominees were decided by anyone but party bosses, he's delusional.

[VRWC For Truth]

None of those 5 will make it in 2016.

[Psalm 144]

Agreed. And they have coopted even more power to themselves as of the last convention. That organization is both dead and rotted IMO and will never see another penny or bead of sweat from me.

[thorvaldr]

We need to focus on 2014.
Nobody knows whether we will be allowed to vote or have a country to vote about in 2016.

[RIghtwardHo]

Bingo.

The only thing I wanna know is how do we keep them from doing it this time.

[Responsibility2nd]

As delusional as anyone who might think the democrat choice is not cherry picked by the media.

Even this article is already declaring Hitlery as the dem choice for 2016.

This is all premature hogwash.

[RIghtwardHo]

*shrug*

Maybe something good will come of it.

[dsrtsage]

“If the author thinks the last two Republican nominees were decided by anyone but party bosses, he’s delusional.”

Personally, I think the last 2 nominees were hand selected by democrats in the news media.

[Boogieman]

“Nobody knows whether we will be allowed to vote or have a country to vote about in 2016.”

Pfff, save the melodrama, please. We needed to be coalescing around a candidate for 2016 starting two years ago, we are already running late.

[jetson]

The GOP is not split but layered. All the fat is at the top and needs to be scraped off.

[Cyber Liberty]

Good. It’s nobody’s “turn,” so maybe we have a chance of getting a good Nominee this time. Meanwhile, the Rats have Hillary!’s turn, so they’re stuck with the problem we usually have with washed-up candidates.

[lodi90]

Ryan is a non starter. Can you imagine him trying to campaign in FL after voting to cut vet retirement pay? It would be like a Rostenkowski town hall at a senior center.

[lodi90]

Huckabee is a no hoper divide the conservative vote GOPe stalking horse. Newt played that role in 2012. Expect the same tactic again from the GOPe power brokers.

[Steamburg]

This is a fight for liberty that we have been putting off for nearly 40 years. The fight must happen and far better now than in the weeks leading up to 2014 or even the beginning of the next election cycle.
The party bosses are weak and exposed. If they consolidate in 2014 there will be the Democrats or the Democrats.

[Cyber Liberty]

Huckabee played that role in ‘08, to clear the path for McQueeg. I’m sure he’d be happy to do it again. He knows he doesn’t have a chance, but he’d be thrilled to get to kick the support from someone else again.

[ansel12]

The last two election cycles were decided by Mitt Romney, although the first one did not pan out for him.

In 2006 Romney was the 800 pound gorilla in money, and that kept out good challengers.

Romney mad it clear that he was willing to use his own money and he did, injecting 45 million personal dollars into his campaign, at advantageous stages during the primary, which increased their value.

Romney also sewed up the big donors very early with several very splashy (and impressive) publicized fund raisers, which made the money message clear to potential challengers.

Most here don’t need to be reminded of his domination of the 2012 cycle.

[ansel12]

Whatever saved us from Romney, was not the problem in 2008.

[Finny]

The only thing I wanna know is how do we keep them from doing it this time..

There's a small chance that GOP primary protocol will, in less than two years, suddenly become repaired enough to represent real people.

There's an overwhelming likelihood that for Republicans and conservatives, 2012 will look very much like 2016: a contest between Uniparty colleagues, both wanting to apply government force in areas moral (the gay agenda), personal (medical/health), and "scientific" (the environmentalist power grab of energy and food production).

I'm already prepared for it, and I think most of us should be. Let's get real, here. The primaries are not all the sudden going to turn around and represent limited government America because they are rigged so that northeastern liberals, left and right, choose the candidate LONG before many of us even have a smidgen of voice. THAT's gonna change in two years?

I ain't holdin' my breath.

Time to start understanding and exploring and facing third party dynamics whether we want them or not, and figuring out how to use them to their best advantage. NOW.