Posted on 08/26/2015 3:58:06 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Earlier this month, I outlined Donald Trump’s “Six Stages of Doom” — the hurdles he’ll have to clear to win the Republican nomination. The first obstacle: Could Trump keep his polling numbers up when another storyline emerged that prevented him from monopolizing the news cycle? “For a variety of reasons, Trump isn’t affected much by negative media coverage — it may even help him,” I wrote. “But a lack of media coverage might be a different story.”
It’s too soon to say whether Trump has passed this first test. Partly because it’s August — almost half a year before Iowa and New Hampshire and way too early to read much into the polls — but also because the Trump show hasn’t stopped. He’s dominating coverage as much as ever.
The chart above shows the share of news coverage and Google search traffic that Trump has received among all Republican candidates. (See here for the methodology.) The share of news coverage devoted to Trump has been fairly steady over the past month. Steady and very high, at 50 percent to 60 percent of all coverage received by the GOP field. In other words, Trump is getting as much coverage as the rest of the Republican field combined. But Trump’s Google search traffic is often just as high, or higher.
There’s one anomaly, though, which is the week of Aug. 2. That was the week of the first Republican debate, in Cleveland. That week, Trump received a comparatively low share of Google search traffic — “only” 41 percent. People weren’t any less interested in Trump after the debate, but they were more interested than usual in some of the other Republican candidates, especially Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich, each of whom had among their best weeks of the year from a search traffic standpoint. So Trump’s share of search traffic fell in proportion to the rest of the field. Media interest in Trump was as high as ever, however: He represented 59 percent of the press coverage that week. Since then, search traffic for Carson, Fiorina and Cruz is a bit higher than before the debate but has reverted mostly back to the mean.
What’s interesting is how Trump seemed to go out of his way after the debate to ensure that he’d remain the center of attention, with his tirade against Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly (a feud that he’s since resurrected). That tended to drown out most of the coverage of whether, say, Fiorina or Kasich had gained momentum after the debate, perhaps preventing them from having the sort of feedback loop of favorable attention that can sometimes trigger surges in the polls.
I don’t know whether this was a deliberate strategy on Trump’s behalf. But if so, it’s pretty brilliant. Trump is perhaps the world’s greatest troll, someone who is amazingly skilled at disrupting the conversation by any means necessary, including by drawing negative, tsk-tsking attention to himself. In the current, “free-for-all” phase of the campaign — when there are 17 candidates and you need only 20 percent or so of the vote to have the plurality in GOP polls — this may be a smart approach. If your goal is to stay at the center of attention rather than necessarily to win the nomination, it’s worth making one friend for every three enemies, provided that those friends tell some pollster that they’d hypothetically vote for you.
Is it sustainable? In the long run, probably not. There are lots of interesting candidates in the GOP field, whether you’re concerned with the horse race, their policy positions or simply just entertainment value. Sooner or later, the media will find another candidate’s story interesting. Cruz has a lot of upside potential in the troll department, for instance, along with better favorability ratings than Trump and a slightly more plausible chance of being the Republican nominee.
But there’s not a lot of hard campaign news to dissect in August. Fend off the occasional threat by throwing a stink bomb whenever another story risks upstaging you, and you can remain at the center of the conversation, and atop the polls, for weeks at a time.
I agree the Trump is a master at keeping peoples attention. It’s all Trump all the time on every news station, as well as both conservative and liberal message boards.
Trump is tuning into a growing fact amongst many Americans.
we are angry and frustrated. And his personality is perfectly suited for that sentiment.
Marco Rubio said today that Trump cannot possibly be the GOP nominee because, “we are not an angry nation.”
I beg to differ, yes, Marco...we are.
We are angry that millions of illegals are being allowed into this country, and the politicians either can’t...and most won’t...stop it.
We are angry that our moral values have been allowed to be trampled by a very small minority, who have been successful in getting politicians and judges to go along with it...and in the process completely change the English language.
We are angry that our hard earned dollars are being spent to support a larger and larger percentage of this country who will not work...and that politicians go along with it and allow it...in fact, far too many encourage it.
We are angry that a half billion of our dollars are being spent to help a corrupt, demented organization kill babies and harvest their body parts, and p[politicians wink at it, or stop cold efforts to end it and defund the Joseph Mangles of our day.
We are angry that corrupt appointees and politicians violate our laws...blatantly...and are not held to account for it.
We are angry that Americans have died at the hands of foreign terrorists and we have been abjectly lied to over and over again about it.
We are angry that our health care has been harmed, and that we were lied to over and over again about...straight to our faces...so that scheming politicians could vote for a decrepit bill that they never even read.
We are angry that our own Justices then ruled in favor of said Health Care travesty by changing the wording of the bill so that they could justify voting for it.
I could go on and on and on, Marco.
we are angry...we are damned mad.
And more and more people are willing to put up with a brash, in your face individual like Trump, that though his manners may not be polite, it is felt at least that he will get into the politicians, the media’s, the establishment’s face and tell them exactly where to go as he addresses a number of these issues.
That’s where folks like Marco and Jeb and others have things all wrong...and where Trump is zeroing in...it is past time to be polite about the BS and time to take a whole bunch of people out to the woodshed and figuratively beat the living daylights out of them for enriching themselves at the political trough while all of this evil has transpired to our nation and its people..
These other folks like Marco and his ilk better figure it out...or they may find a reservation at said wood shed.
America at the Crossroads
http://www.jeffhead.com/crossroads.htm
Cheaper than ads.
Trump was talking yesterday about campaigning, and he noted that since he’s on TV every day he has to constantly come up with new things to say. He doesn’t want people to get bored with hearing the same speech over and over. Contrast that with the average candidate who repeats the same stump speech 100 times in hopes that the average voter may hear it once.
Nate Silver. Stopped reading right there.
I beg to differ, yes, Marco...we are.
“...Cruz has a lot of upside potential in the troll department, for instance, along with better favorability ratings than Trump and a slightly more plausible chance of being the Republican nominee....”
Out of all the elections my decades have shown me, this has got to be the most historical and tumultuous with the political and patriotic battle fronts looking somewhat like a jigsaw puzzle. Regardless of voter preferences, the initial messages from the potential voters coming out are loud and clear.
Regarding Ted Cruz, I am not surprised where he is in this poll line up. Bush is holding on name recognition because his political messages are not what the people want to hear. Mainly his clear (and weak) “open” border, pro-Mexican immigration along with the generic Bush weakness are going to take him down even further as “bling Bushies” figure out that another weak RINO will with such an agenda is a sure loser. Carson has a good conservative limitied message but he is not coming on strong yet, if he ever does. Just don’t know if it is in his personal make-up.
Which really leaves the key CONSERVATIVE candidates to, downstream to take the one and two positions in the race (IMHO). I think that Trump is smart enough to get the best team of advisors that he will need and I guess the same can be said for Cruz as well, depending on who might win it. The best presidents in our history have always been smart enough to surround themselves with the best advisors and experts they will need to fix the horrid mess Obama has deliberately left this country in.
We certainly have a long way to go yet, but I would hope to see Cruz rise up in the ratings gradually but that is up to him and his campaign staff. Again IMHO, America will be best off with a final choice between Trump, who is NOT OWNED BY THE LOBBYISTS, SPECIAL INTERESTS AND OTHERS (very powerful position) and Cruz who is ALL PATRIOT AND ANTI-LIBERALISM and a fighter.
We can only hope but the general trends are in that direction. God help us and our country.
All Trump has to do is keep dusting it up with the MSM and the Republicans. The people you love to hate. :-)
“Sooner or later, the media will find another candidate’s story interesting.”
Even if they did, Trumps megaphone is miles bigger than every other candidate. If every other candidate yells and screams as loud as they can with media covering it, they still sound like gnats around him.
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