"To know, know, know himis to love, love, love himJust to see him smile,makes my life worthwhile."Phil Spector, "To Know him is to Love him," 1958
College classmate Peter Lemieux writes a data-rich analysis of politics in his website Politics by the Numbers -- politicsbythenumbers.org. It is written "for the numerically inclined." He charts, graphs, and analyzes relationships in national politics.
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| Lemieux with cat Zoe |
Four years ago I wrote about the strong relationship between a candidate's "name recognition" and favorability toward that candidate. In that case I was looking at the Democrats. I ran the same analysis for this year's Republican contenders.
Direct link to the graphic
Peter Lemieux puts into words what we are seeing here. People who dare cross Trump become outcasts:
The line represents the best-fit regression for all candidates except Chris Christie, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, and Mike Pence. Now it's Christie in the DeBlasio role, but echoes of "Hang Mike Pence" can be seen in his low rating as well. Those three are seen by most Republican voters as anti-Trumpers."
Four years ago DeBlazio was the outlier, being well known but not well liked. The close fit of most candidates along the line of being known suggests that presidential candidates are good at selling themselves. We may say we "hate politicians," but that is in the abstract.
I get occasional comments from Republican readers observing that this blog "has a fixation on Trump" and that I exaggerate his influence on the Republican Party. I wish that were so. Alas, it is not. The GOP is Trump's party. There is one way to be disliked, and that is to be known by Republican voters for defying Trump.
To remind readers about the abbreviations:
Candidates along the trend line:
TRU is Donald Trump
DES is Ron DeSantis
SCT is Tim Scott
HLY is Nikki Haley
RAM is Vivek Ramaswami
ELD is Larry Elder
BUR is Doug Burgum
HRD is William Hurd
JHN is Perry Johnson
LAF is Steve Laffey
Candidates below the trend line:
PEN is Mike Pence
CHR is Chris Christie
HUT is Asa Hutchison
Lemieux's chart is based on data from polling by Monmouth University.
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6 comments:
Name recognition is certainly one major factor, but not the only one. There is also the matter of who the candidate is trying to attract. Trump is known by literally everyone, but no sane American with any respect for the rule of law would vote for him. The problem is there are far more people than I ever would have thought who find his belligerent lawlessness appealing.
Republicans who think Peter has a fixation on Trump must be trying to delude themselves into imagining that if they ignore him, he’ll go away. He won’t. He’s the undisputed leader of their party and their frontrunner for the presidential nomination. The more he’s indicted, the better most Republicans like him. Those who don’t may be in the wrong party.
The Party of Trump baffles me. The worse he gets, the better they like him. It seems to me that this is a form of mass hysteria, for a lack of better words, and I'm starting to believe his brag about shooting someone on 5th Avenue would increase his popularity. The only problem I see with that scenario is that he's too much of a Coward to expose himself to any possibility of physical harm.
It appears that the number of SANE repubs who vote for trump due to hating Biden will determine who wins potus n 2024. Without many millions of these seemingly normal repubs voting for trump, he can’t win.
The chart is a hopeful sign. Any candidate who is on the line might be able to catch up to Trump by improving their name recognition. All it takes is charisma and a lot of $$$.
Thanks to Trump and his cult, the Republican party has become equated with misogyny, xenophobia and denial of reality. If he wins the nomination and nobody sane votes for him, hopefully he won’t have a chance. If a sane Republican – assuming there still is such a thing – were to somehow become the nominee, the question is whether s/he would have a chance without the support of the party’s current base of angry whackos. I suspect the GOP is afraid to find out.
I find Peter's name recognition/favorability paradigm interesting. but I'm not sure the anti-Trump theory is the only explanation re the "outliers". Familiarity can breed contempt as well as favorability. Republicans had soured on Christie long before Trump. Perhaps it was his brash Jersey style; perhaps he had already proven he couldn't win; perhaps voters puzzled how he would be able to take control of the free world if he couldn't control his obesity; perhaps it was the photo of him full-body bear-hugging President Obama during Hurricane Sandy. Right now he's seen as running a fake campaign, and a vicious one at that -- just go away, say Republican voters. As for fellow outlier Pence, he didn't have a Republican fan base from day one--or, at least, not one that could ever support a presidential run. He gave off a "strange dude" vibe from the start; he still does. And long before Jan. 6 Republicans had deduced that Pence probably was the mole who'd leaked presidential meeting info to the media -- a "ratty" thing to do, Republicans thought, no matter who was in the Oval office. Peter's analysis is thought-provoking, though, and a welcome insight into the campaign dynamic.
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