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Donald Trump keeps on saying stupid, hateful things. About Mexicans, women, John McCain, Megyn Kelly ... And he keeps on leading the Republican presidential race. Gosh, could there be a correlation? If anything, Trump has consolidated a sizable lead in the Republican race since the big debate earlier this month, as the new CNN poll demonstrates. And he is the most trusted voice on the major issues, even winning plaudits from supporters of other candidates. What that means is the other Republican candidates can't afford to deviate much from what this guy is saying. Let's keep that in mind in...

Cruz Picking Up Money and Support According to the Dallas Morning News, Ted Cruz isn’t making things any easier for Rick Perry. Cruz has raised close to $900,000 from some of the same donors who donated to Perry’s 2012 campaign. Those same people have only donated a little over $370,000 to Perry this time. Cruz isn’t just raising money though, he is connecting with a lot of potential voters. With $14 million, Cruz’s campaign has raised more than any other Republican–he was the first candidate to officially declare, which gave him a head start on fundraising–and he’s dominated the market...

The 2016 Republican presidential primary field is unusually large and unusually unsettled, and the first debate earlier this month didn’t do much to change either of those things. So we gathered FiveThirtyEight’s political writers in Slack to talk about the state of the race. This is an edited transcript of the conversation. micah (Micah Cohen, senior editor): Harry and Nate, a Fox News poll released Sunday found Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Ted Cruz leading the Republican primary race, and a lot of people are saying the outsider/angry wing of the GOP is ascendant. Is something going on? The Republican...

Wishful thinking can come in many shapes and sizes, but history and present reality do readily tell us that Bernie Sanders is more likely to walk among us during the early stage of the presidential campaign as a prophet than as a messiah. And that is not such a bad thing, for martyrdom always seems to take place as precursor to major change; and this resolute honest New Yorker representing Vermont appears poised to bring inspirational change in the much-needed political transformation of American society. Yes; Americans, both the destitute and the destitute-in-waiting middle class do need a champion to...

It’s been 12 days since the first Republican presidential debate was broadcast on the Fox News Channel. Immediately following that event on the network’s The Kelly File, pollster Frank Luntz conducted a focus group on location in Cleveland, the site of the debate. According to the participants of his focus group, real estate mogul Donald Trump, the frontrunner of the race, fared poorly, but they gave a mixed response as to who was the strongest in the debate. Many of the respondents gave a favorable reactions to former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). former Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon...

Okay, so what happens after Trump? What happens if he fades away or decides he’s had enough and drops out? What do his angry, frustrated and fed-up supporters do? Do they also drop out? Early warning: This column has more questions than answers – usually not a good thing for someone who’s at least attempting to influence the conversation. But when writing or talking about Donald Trump and his run for the presidency, there are few easy, or obvious, answers to the many questions his candidacy raises. You’ve been warned. There is a civil war raging in the Republican Party,...

By far the biggest story of the summer is Donald Trump's surging candidacy for the U.S. presidency. It's obvious why. Hate him or love him, Donald Trump knows how to captivate the public's attention. He seems immune from being hurt; I want to examine why. What is it about Donald Trump that allows him to survive any occurrence that no conventional political candidate could? And, not only that, but to use these instances to further galvanize his base of supporters, while growing it? This summer, we have seen example after example of this. People were horrified when he questioned Sen....

Donald Trump continues to bring comic relief and mean-spirited bombast to the Republican campaign trail. But while Trump is a continuing spectacle, he also makes (a tiny bit) more sense than his rivals when he indicts U.S. trade policies or scorns the influence of big money that turns politicians into puppets. Nevertheless Trump, despite his current lead in the polls, isn’t likely to be the Republican presidential nominee. William Galston, the Wall Street Journal’s designated Democratic pundit, last week suggested that there were five “plausible” Republican candidates — Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Ted Cruz (Tex.), Govs. Scott Walker (Wis.)...

Donald Trump announced his presidential campaign with an ugly tirade against Mexican immigrants—“They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”—that shot him to the top of the GOP polls. He’s been there ever since, despite racism, sexism, and open disrespect for combat veterans. Now, Trump is the center of gravity in the Republican race for president, and his antics affect every candidate, from mainstream picks like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, to more direct rivals like Scott Walker and Ted Cruz. On Monday, his pull got a little stronger. Trump published his first set of proposals, a plan for immigration...

Donald Trump is not only expanding his lead in the Republican presidential race. According to a new CNN/ORC poll out Tuesday, the real-estate tycoon has built out a dominating lead on two of the issues most important to Republican voters. A walloping 45% of respondents said Trump was the best candidate to improve the US economy. The next closest contender was Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, who had a mere 8% say the same about his potential stewardship. The core of Trump's campaign platform is based off of his opposition to illegal immigration and his heated — and sometimes...

"And I was also in support – if the Republicans stuck together, you could have done it with Obamacare also...But the Republicans decided not to stick together...And they left a few people out there, like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)...You know, they left a lot of the people that really went in, and wanted to do the job. And you know what, if they stuck together, they would have won that battle." – Donald Trump http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/08/04/trump-and-cruz-partner-to-strip-planned-parenthoods-funding/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social Could this be the beginning of a 3rd Party Alliance??? http://www.redstate.com/2015/08/13/dear-media-stop-trying-tie-trump-around-ted-cruzs-neck/ This is just me thinking out loud. But if you are like me you...

--TRUMP UNVEILS HIS IMMIGRATION PLAN, CALLS FOR END TO BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP: Donald Trump released his specific plan for immigration reform yesterday, ABC's JOHN SANTUCCI reports. In the 6-page report titled "Immigration Reform That Will Make America Great Again," Trump is calling for an end to birthright citizenship, saying it "remains the biggest magnet for illegal immigration." Trump again repeated his commitment to build a wall on the United States' southern border. Outlining his plan, Trump's policy seeks to "impound all remittance payments derived from illegal wages; increase fees on all temporary visas issued to Mexican CEOs and diplomats (and if...

Scott Walker is the Tim Tebow of politics…the pro-life, conservative sensation on top of the world (or the polls) one moment, the invisible man the next. For those who don’t know Tebow’s NFL story, here’s the short version: Drafted in the first round by the Denver Broncos despite most pundits saying at the time he didn’t have the arm to succeed in the NFL. Tebow takes over a struggling Bronco team, leads a bunch of unlikely comeback victories late in the season and somehow gets them to the playoffs. God’s quarterback proceeds to carry Denver to a win over the...

Five Republican presidential candidates are appearing in Columbus this week, but not one of them is named John Kasich. Americans for Prosperity, bankrolled by GOP mega-donors Charles and David Koch, is snubbing the Ohio governor at its Defending the American Dream summit at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. Even a state representative from Florida and Jon Taffer — host of Spike TV’s Bar Rescue — are making the stage instead of Kasich. Slated to speak on Friday are former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. Saturday’s gathering will hear from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former Texas Gov....

Donald Trump holding his own in a new Fox News poll, establishment candidates Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Marco Rubio all are losing traction. Senator Rand Paul’s (R-KY) campaign has collapsed, allies indicted for fraud. Mr. Trump is continuing to dominate with 25% support nationally while Dr. Ben Carson, is running 2nd at 12%. Texas Senator Ted Cruz is 3rd at 10%. Those findings mirror recent polls in Iowa and elsewhere. Jeb Bush has place 9% for a 4th place finish, dropping from 15% and 2nd place in a Fox News poll conducted earlier this month, before the first GOP...

In 2013, right after she stepped down as U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton enjoyed a high approval rating from the American people. Her trust level was on solid ground. Given her loyal service to the country and to President Barack Obama after the bruising 2008 Democratic presidential primaries in which she and Obama vigorously contended, Clinton’s standing among Democrats was sky high. This situation has allowed Clinton to be perceived as the prohibitive Democratic presidential nominee for the 2016 general elections. A few months ago, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was undetectable on the presidential political radar as few...

Special to The Washington Post. How is Donald Trump's candidacy affecting the public conversation — which, in turn, influences how campaigners compete? The PEORIA Project relies on a Zignal Labs data platform to track presidential campaign conversations across news and social media, including all tweets; publicly available Facebook user posts; comments on YouTube videos, Vimeo and MediaBistro; about 35 million blogs; news stories from more than 100,000 online outlets; all Lexis/Nexis print media content; and television closed-caption content from 900 channels in every U.S. media market....

On Mark Levin's show on Friday he asked the question, "What is the process of the Republican primary process?" My answer is to vet the candidates. That's why for the past six months I've been writing whatever I can get my hands on regarding what the candidates have said or done. Not gossip, not rumors, but their own actual words, their own actual votes. Some readers haven't been happy with that, but I see my mission as to get the information out there and let you decide. Some voters may not care that Carly Fiorina effusively praised Islam right after...

<p>FLINT, Mich. — A few hours before Donald Trump’s plane landed, 20 minutes south of where he would speak, people gathered outside the Flint Assembly Plant to take a peek into the past. Some of them were retired, reuniting with friends. All of them remembered how there used to be more to the place.</p>

"We will make great trade deals, we will save Social Security without cuts, we will come up with health care plans that will be phenomenal — phenomenal," Trump told a packed high school auditorium. Trump's trip to the first primary state comes as he continues to hold a commanding lead in the Republican presidential primary, despite a spat with Fox News personality Megyn Kelly, staff shakeups and continued criticism over his comments about Mexican immigrants. Although he speaks without a script, Trump's talking points here echoed those he's made on the campaign trail for months, namely touting his skills as...