Is this the year of the antipolitician? Political pundits would have us believe it is. As evidence, they cite recent polls showing businessman Donald Trump widening his lead in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, while another political neophyte, neurosurgeon Ben Carson, gains ground on the rest of the field. Meanwhile, the so-called Republican establishment candidates, most notably erstwhile front-runner Jeb Bush, are losing ground to their nonpolitician rivals. On the Democratic side of race, the self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders has surged ahead of party-establishment favorite Hillary Clinton in polls in the key states of Iowa and New Hampshire, a result that is leading some pundits to suggest it is time for Clinton to start panicking.
Whether we accept this media narrative, however, depends in part on how much stock we can put in these early survey results. How well do polls this early in the process predict the eventual outcomes of the nominating races? The short answer is: “Not very well.” I was reminded of this by the announcement late last week by former Texas Gov. Rick Perry that he is suspending his campaign for the Republican nomination. Perry’s decision in itself was not particularly surprising — he was struggling in the polls and failed to qualify for the “grown up” debates featuring the top-tier Republican presidential candidates. However, Perry’s departure came almost four years to the day from when he surged to his highest point atop the polls for 2012 Republican nomination. On September 13, 2011, only a month after he formally declared his candidacy, Perry had rocketed to the top of the Republican field with close to 32 percent support — almost exactly where Donald Trump sits in national polls today. Headlines from that period proclaimed that Perry was ” surging ahead of the Republican pack,” thus forcing Mitt Romney — the purported front-runner prior to Perry’s entrance — to reconsider his campaign strategy. And today? If media reports are to be believed, Jeb Bush, the party front-runner before Trump’s entrance, is seeking a new strategy to deal with his upstart rival.
[SEE: Editorial Cartoons on the 2016 Presidential Elections]
We all remember what happened in 2011, of course. A disastrous debate performance In November, in which Perry uttered his infamous “oops” after forgetting one of the three cabinet agencies he would eliminate if elected, helped doom his bid. In truth, however, Perry’s support had already begun eroding prior to that gaffe due in part to previous weak debate performances as well as increased scrutiny of his record as Texas governor, including his defense of a Texas law that allowed in-state tuition for the children of illegal immigrants and flip-flopping on whether to mandate a vaccine for young girls against a sexually transmitted virus that can cause cervical cancer. By mid-October his support in the polls had already dropped back down to where it was when he first announced his candidacy. In hindsight, the November “oops” comment was simply the final nail in Perry’s presidential coffin.
Of course, the parallels with four years ago are not exact. Rick Perry is most assuredly not Donald Trump. The former is an experienced politician, and the longest-serving governor in Texas history. Trump, in contrast, and consistent with the current media narrative, positively boasts that he is not part of the Washington establishment. Nonetheless, Perry’s 2011 roller coaster of a campaign should serve as a warning to anyone trying to infer from recent polls who is likely win the 2016 nominations. The plain fact is that this early in the electoral process polls are simply not very reliable predictors regarding how the nominating races will turn out. This is because most voters simply haven’t tuned into the campaign. Historically less than a third of voters are paying attention to the presidential race this far ahead of the November election. This means early polling results often are driven by respondents’ sense of who is getting the greatest and most favorable media coverage, rather than any deeply-reasoned indication regarding which candidate they are likely to support. This seems the most likely explanation for Trump’s surprising staying power atop the polls — he has proved extraordinarily adept at maximizing media coverage. And his ability to suck up the media oxygen likely contributed to Perry’s inability to attract much support this time around. Indeed, there is some evidence suggesting that along with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Perry was hurt the most by Trump’s entrance into the race. The irony here, of course, is that Perry seemed to be a much better prepared candidate this time around.
[SEE: Editorial Cartoons on Donald Trump]
This does not mean that Trump is immune to the pattern of discovery-scrutiny-decline, and related polling results, that have characterized media coverage in previous campaigns and which partly explains why two previous Republican front-runners — Scott Walker and Jeb Bush — saw their polling lead dissipate during the current cycle. As Perry discovered in 2011, the tone of the media coverage can and does change throughout the course of a campaign, often quite dramatically, with front-runners usually getting more media scrutiny and, consequently, greater negative coverage, particularly as opponents begin targeting them. In a previous post I noted several reasons why it may take a bit longer for this dynamic to extract a toll on The Donald’s polling numbers. One of those factors is whether an alternative candidate stands poised in the wings to capitalize on the increasingly negative coverage of the front runner. When Perry’s polling balloon burst four years ago, he was succeeded atop the Republican polls by Herman Cain, a nonpolitician who also sought to make a virtue of his lack of political experience. Cain subsequently endured his own boom-and-bust cycle. Is Ben Carson this year’s Cain? Time, and perhaps a few more debates, will tell.
In the meantime, it is best not to rely too heavily on current polls when handicapping the 2016 nominating contest, to say nothing of the general election. Of course, it is possible this time is really different. Maybe it is truly the year of the nonpolitician. Maybe The Donald is poised to pull a “yuuge — really yuuuge” upset. Maybe — but history suggests that in the absence of other evidence it would be foolish to base this claim on polling results three months before the first nominating contest takes place.
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The Rick Perry Lesson for Donald Trump originally appeared on usnews.com
