Yet another poll shows that many Republicans like what Donald Trump is selling — and the way he’s selling it. So he continues to rise in the polls, Ben Carson is sinking, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is rising (at the expense of Carson):
Donald Trump has hit his highest level of support yet in a new Washington Post/ABC News poll of registered Republicans out Tuesday: 38 percent.
Despite the widespread blowback over Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., GOP voters seem to like it: Trump’s support is up from 32 percent in November. (The poll, it should be noted, has a relatively small Republican sample, with a margin of error on the high side.)Trump’s support is 2½ times that of his nearest rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (15 percent), who rose from 8 percent in last month’s survey. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson fell from 22 percent in November to 12 percent in December after a series of foreign policy gaffes and questions about his past.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is tied with Carson at 12 percent and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has 5 percent. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has 4 percent. All other candidates are at 2 percent or less.
AND:
Trump also polls the strongest on the question of who has the best chance of getting elected president: Nearly half of registered voters (47 percent) thought so. That number has gone up from 38 percent in November. Cruz follows Trump in electability with 15 percent, an increase from 6 percent last month, and Rubio has 14 percent, down from 17 percent in November. Bush has 8 percent, down 2 percentage points, and Carson — who had 22 percent in November — is now at 7 percent.
Still, the majority of U.S. adults said they would feel “anxious” with a President Trump (69 percent), with 49 percent saying they would feel very anxious. Only 29 percent said they’d feel comfortable. One in two Americans (51 percent) would feel anxious with Hillary Clinton in the White House, and 47 percent would feel comfortable.
Trump is like political comfort food to the GOP: it feels sooooooooooooooooooo good to digest. But there could be consquences later on.
Nate Silver notes how Trump could but probably won’t win:
Despite controversy after controversy, Donald Trump still dominates the polls. With his seemingly impervious lead, it is tempting to declare that he is a clear front-runner for the nomination.
He has, after all, defied all expectations of his impending demise, including an early one from this author. If he has survived everything so far, why should he lose now?
Mr. Trump has emerged as a true factional candidate — much more like Howard Dean or Pat Buchanan than Herman Cain, or other candidates who have surged to the top of the polls only to collapse.
But it’s still too soon to say Mr. Trump is the front-runner for the nomination. He has a high floor but a low ceiling, and although he has weathered many controversies, the toughest days are yet to come.
The polls already show initial signs of those challenges, like Ted Cruz’s lead in Iowa; the number of Republicans who say they would not support him; his weakness in polls of verified voters; and his smaller or nonexistent leads in one-on-one matchups against likely rivals.
His chances of winning — which are real, even if not good — depend much more on the weaknesses of his opponents than his own strengths. The good news for Mr. Trump is that the opposition is flawed enough to entertain such an outcome.
AND:
The notion that Mr. Trump should be considered a strong front-runner based on current polls is understandable, but inconsistent with recent history. In nearly every election cycle, there are candidates who lead national polls and sometimes even win states, but don’t come close to winning the nomination.
The polls at this volatile stage can be particularly misleading. Just consider where we were four years ago, when the race was transitioning from the Cain surge to the Newt Gingrich surge. Or four years before that, when neither John McCain nor Barack Obama led nationally or in any early state. At this point in 2004, Mr. Dean led in Iowa, New Hampshire and in national polls. He took a distant third place in Iowa — and that was before his famous scream. Ultimately, he won only his home state, Vermont.
Mr. Trump shares a lot in common with strong factional candidates who have ultimately fallen short in recent cycles: He does not have broad appeal throughout the party; he is unacceptable to the party’s establishment; and there are reasons to believe that his high numbers may be driven by unsustainable factors — like voters who are less likely to turn out or who are responding to pollsters with “Trump” because they haven’t heard any other name for four months.
Some recent comparisons can tell us a lot about the ways that seemingly strong candidates can go on to lose. Mr. Trump could follow in the footsteps of Mr. Dean, who faltered over the final 45 days of the primary process, as voters questioned his temperament and electability.
Mr. Trump will face similar questions, and there are additional questions about the solidity of his support. He tends to do worse in opinion surveys that use people from the voter registration file; the file allows pollsters to narrow their sample to past primary voters. And his dominance of media coverage may be harder to sustain once the field narrows, or actual voting results roll in. (On Monday, he was subject to rare criticism from conservative radio hosts.)
Read the rest of the post.
Taken together, this is further reason why all (political junkie) eyes will be on the tonight’s GOP Presidential wannabes debate on CNN.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.