Talk:List of Republican Party presidential primaries

Talk Page for Republican Party presidential primaries
This article deserves a talk page so changes can be discussed before they are implemented. -- Charles Edwin Shipp (talk) 03:38, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

New NEWS today, for future editing
The Republican National Committee announced Friday that Fox News will host the first 2016 GOP presidential primary debate, from Ohio, in August. Headline-1: Fox News to host first GOP presidential primary debate in August QUOTE: "In all, there will be nine scheduled debates. Five will be held in 2015 and will take place in Ohio, California, Colorado, Wisconsin and Nevada. In 2016, there will be debates in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. The GOP will officially nominate its presidential candidate in July 2016 during the party’s national convention. " -- Charles Edwin Shipp (talk) 03:49, 17 January 2015 (UTC) -- PS: FYI for future editing.
 * http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/01/16/rnc-announces-schedule-for-presidential-debates-fox-hosts-first-from-ohio-in/?intcmp=latestnews


 * Check out: Republican_Party_presidential_debates,_2016 (ahead of this article) -- AstroU (talk) 04:00, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

See also: Republican_Party_presidential_primaries,_2016 -- AstroU (talk) 04:08, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

use of 'frontrunner' in the 2016 context
See my usertalk note over here, User_talk:104.52.53.152. Romney'12 fit the definition, albeit barely (he fell to 16% and may have briefly been in 3rd place at one point). So although he was the frontrunner, and was the clear frontrunner from Dec'08 through Jun'11-or-Aug'11-depending-how-you-count, Romney'12 was also a relatively weak frontrunner compared to previous contests, especially 2004/2000/1996/1992. There is no Romney in the 2016 race, quite literally -- Romney was the nominal-leader in Dec'14-to-Jan'15 for the 2016 nomination, but then dropped out.

So to me, the most interesting thing about 2016 is not that there is no clear frontrunner *now* in summer 2015 when things are heating up, but rather that there has never BEEN a clear frontrunner, during 2013 and 2014. Romney was the frontrunner from Dec'09 through Jun'11 pretty much... after which it because unclear whether he could hold on to that status (see frontrunner Guiliani of 2008 who eventually lost frontrunner-status ... whereas in 2012 Romney eventually retained it). Those contests were pretty much nothing like this 2016 cycle.

Here are some WP:SOURCES, all along the way, that explicitly describe the race as having no clear frontrunner: Feb'13, Apr'13, Mar'14, Dec'14, Feb'15, Feb'15, May'15, May'15, Jun'15, Jul'15, Aug'15.  Now I realize that there are also sources which explicitly say "the frontrunner is now seemingly X" and also that the "frontrunner is clearly Y and always has been", in a few cases. Wikipedia needs to reflect all significant views, but as the long list above shows, the idea that there is No Clear Frontrunner is a significant view.

In short, I suggest that we revise the description of the 2016 race on this article, and over in the main article, give the readership some smoothed-polling-numbers, and some polling-trends. The most salient fact about the 2016 race is that nobody has been above 20% for more than a couple months or so, at any point. The nominal poll-leader's name, at any given point, is less important than the fact that the nominal-poll-leader generally has less than 20% support (and in the vast majority of cases less than 15%!), which is pretty nuts to my ears. :-)     And pretty unprecedented, for a Republican presidential contest, historically.  We live in interesting times, it seems.  The polling-data for 2016 indicates that there has never been a clear frontrunner, which is roughly defined as somebody who 1) is the topmost pick in the who-is-your-first-pref-polls... or at least was the topmost pick very recently and is expected to become so again, 2) has retained that topmost-pick status for many consecutive months, 3) has been above an absolute score of 20+% for many consecutive months, 4) has never fallen significantly below an absolute score of 15% in the polls, as well as 5) has always been in the top-three even when they were not topmost. Romney'12 was a weak-frontrunner, but met most of the definition most of the time. GWB in 2000, and Dole in 1996, were strong frontrunners. H.Clinton in 2016 is an incredibly strong frontrunner.

Here is the 2016 'smoothed' graph, which shows Rubio above 20% during Jan'13 but then plummetting, Paul the nominal-leader in July'13 but with only 13% first-pick-prefs, Christie the nominal-leader in the latter half of 2013 but peaking at 15% max in Nov'13 (cf Bridgegate) then dropping steadily thereafter, Huckabee the nominal-leader as of Feb'14 but as usual with only 14% peak, by June'14 we have nominal-leader Bush, but once again as with the rest he has a just 12% first-pref-pick-score, which stays flat for all of 2014. Romney flirted with a 3rd run during Nov'14/Dec'14/Jan'15 (his peak at ~20.5% is not shown on the URL above since he dropped out but can be seen here -- with their latest RCP chart here -- make sure you click the 'MAX' button to see the chart-data from 2013 and 2014 not just the most recent six months).

Beside Romney's brief attempt at a 3rd presidential campaign, Ryan also dropped out of the 2016 race (opting to be House-Budget-Chair instead) during that same Dec'14 timeframe, plus Carson and Fiorina entered the race during the summer leading up to the Nov'14-midterms-timeframe, so there is a noticeably shift in polling at the Nov'14 point. After staying between 10.5% and 11.5% for two full years, coming into Feb'15 (when Romney & Ryan were both definitely out), Bush has finally improved from his 12% flatline to his roughly 15% peak... but then falls off thereafter. By Apr'14, the new nominal-leader is Walker, who peaks at 14% (about the same as all the other nominal-leaders), then declines as people get to know him better, but remains a contender in double-digits. Rubio makes a comeback in May'15, rising to 12% briefly, up from his 5% trough but nowhere near his nominal-leader days of Jan'13. Ben Carson hits smoothed-10% in June'15, making him the tenth candidate to get into double-digits I believe (after Rubio/Paul/Christie/Huckabee/Romney/Bush/Walker/Cruz/Ryan). Trump, who has been elided from most polling by the media, on the presumption he would not really run, zooms from an undervalued 5% at the beginning of June'15 to an overvalued 25% at the beginning of Aug'15, becoming the nominal-leader at the beginning of July'15 when he zooms passed Bush, and perhaps more importantly, Trump finally crosses the 15% mark that all the *actually-running* 'nominal-poll-leaders' had (until then) been consistently capped at, then crosses the 25% mark (only Rubio and Romney had been above smoothed-20% before Trump entered the race).

So the 2016 race is a complete mess, basically, in terms of the nominal-leader; the best you can say is that around a dozen candidates have been in double-digits, and the other candidates have rarely risen above 5% smoothed... but it is still pretty early, with unlimited outside expenditures likely to be a factor -- Walker was very low for years, before he zoomed into double-digits (and briefly became nominal-poll-leader). Santorum was the same in 2012, always under 5% until mid-December-2011 at which point a large cash infusion zoomed him upwards into double-digits. We have several candidates that are under the 5% mark, and have never been the nominal-poll-leader nor in double-digits, who have still managed to amass roughly ten million bucks in super-PAC cash, each: Perry $17m, Kasich $12m, Jindal $9m, and Fiorina $5m (plus she might change her mind about using her personal wealth of $60m for the campaign). These numbers are not competitive with the $51m that Cruz has raised (also never nominal-poll-leader albeit he has been in double-digits), and may or may not be competitive with Carson (who raised 10m in hard-money from his campaign and has three super-PACs which are reportedly 'feuding' and also reportedly(?) have not filed by the July 31st deadline). They are competitive with Rand Paul's fundraising so far ($7m campaign + $5m superPac), and he has been nominal-poll-leader as well as in double-digits, and ditto for Chris Christie's numbers&status.

By way of contrast, look at the 2012 'smoothed' dataset, where Romney was above ~15% at all times and regularly above 20% from Jun'09 thru Oct'10 and then again from Oct'11 through the end of the race. Romney was briefly challenged (in the polls if not in fundraising) at several points, and fell below 20% for an extended period (hence his weak-front-runner status), but nobody else from Dec'08 through Aug'11 was ever above 15% even briefly. Romney was a weak-frontrunner, but he was definitely a frontrunner, consistently, the entire race.

Rubio was the late-2012 nominal-frontrunner, but his chart looks nothing like Romney's. Christie was the mid-2013 nominal-frontrunner, but again, his chart looks nothing like Romney's.  At the moment, both of them are below 5% in first-pick-prefs. As for Bush, it is a false narrative -- albeit a reliably-sourced one that we should reflect per WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV -- that Bush is a frontrunner now, and especially, that he has 'always' been the frontrunner, since he was definitely in 4th-or-5th-place all of 2013, and his nominal-leader status as of June'14 was not due to his minimal rise from 11% to 12% first-pref-pick, but simply due to Bush holding steady whilst the ones who were formerly ahead of him dropped downwards: during 2014 we saw Huckabee drop from 14% peak to 8% trough, Paul from 13% peak to 7% trough, Christie from 14% peak to 7% low-point-but-not-yet-trough, and Rubio continue declining from 8% at the beginning of 2014 to 4% trough near the end. Prior to June 2014, though, *all* those people were consistently ahead of Bush, for many months at a time, and all of them spent at least a couple months in the nominal-leader spot. Furthermore, from Sep'13 thru Dec'13 the huffpo smoothing has Cruz tied with Bush at ~10% or 11% each, although Cruz was never really ahead of Bush by more than a smoothed-percentage-point or so, and never managed to be the nominal-leader during 2013 or 2014 (nor so far in 2015). That said, Cruz has never been out of the running, either: his peak was at 11% and his trough was at 5% which puts him in the same kind of company as Rubio/Christie, and within striking distance of Huckabee/Paul... and of course, he was tied with Bush for several months, and with the amount of fundraising Cruz has managed, he cannot be counted out.

The most important fact about Bush, which distinguishes him from all the others in the race (not counting Romney who is out), is that Bush has a "strong floor" by which I mean his smoothed-polling-nums have never fallen beneath 10.4% or thereabouts; he has always been in double-digits, consistently. The second-most-important-fact about Bush is that he doesn't have much support outside that core-group floor, because his 2013 peak/trough was 10.8%/10.4% and his bulk-of-2014 peak/trough was 11.3%/10.9% (from Jan'14 thru Nov'14 when Romney entered the race and Ryan dropped). Between Dec'14 and Aug'15, Bush has gained ground to 14%, then lost it to 11%, then gained some of it back: with Ryan out, the first bump for Bush was to a peak of 14.8% in Feb'15 (albeit overshadowed by the rise of Romney to nominal-leader at smoothed-20% in polls from Nov'14 thru Jan'15). So although Bush was nominal-leader for all of Mar'15, that was his peak and Bush was slowly falling, with Walker was quickly rising, so by Apr'15 the nominal leader was Walker who peaked at 14.2% whilst Bush fell back to a 2015-trough of 11.8% (still well above his floor of 10.4% but back to his summer'14 polling-numbers again).

Later, Walker fell from his Apr'15 peak of 14% to his June trough of 10%, so Bush again briefly became the nominal-leader during Jun'15, albeit with polling-numbers of 12% to 13% (above his 2013 and 2014 numbers by a couple points but below his Feb/Mar'15 peak of 14.8%). Trump announced in mid-June, and by July had become the nominal-leader, and for the first time, from July ~20th through this writing on Aug 6th, has been not just above 20% (Romney did that) but above 25% for at least a brief period. Whether Trump can stay above 25%, or even stay the nominal-poll-leader, remains to be seen, and per WP:CRYSTAL wikipedia should stay silent on that matter, until we see what happens.

I'm working on some revisions to the main article, with the polling-data above in mind, but I figured I would leave a note here on the summary-article-of-that-main-article, pointing out that the term frontrunner is probably something to avoid when talking about the 2016 race. It is way more complicated than the 2012 race, and arguably, more complicated than any Republican race since B.Taft versus Dewey in the 1940 election, which was dramatically decided at the last second by convention delegates, who picked flamboyant celebrity-businessman Trump as their 1940 nominee... errr, sorry, make that flamboyant celebrity-businessman Willkie as their nominee. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 13:36, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Note regarding moving this page
For those who may be interested, I just moved this page from Republican Party presidential primaries to List of Republican Party presidentla primaries. It is now consistent with the page List of Democratic Party presidential primaries.

With that said, I saw that somehow, it had been marked as "minor". I did not intentionally do this, as I am fully aware renaming a page is not a minor move. I do not know or understand what happened that caused it to be marked as minor.

If anyone has any questions, respond here or send me a line on my talk page. Mungo Kitsch (talk) 02:58, 4 April 2020 (UTC)