Civis Analytics: Trump doing better among R-leaning I's than among R's alone

[Statistikhengst]

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First, as of this point, there is no doubt that Donald Trump is currently the prohibitive front runner for the GOP nomination. In every single national nomination poll over the last 5+ weeks, he has been on top:

Screenshot source.

Please notice that a number of polls, like Gravis (R)/OANN and IPSOS/Reuters, are missing from that list. RCP is not as inclusive as people think.

In virtually all state nomination polling (save Wisconsin and a tie in Florida), Trump is ahead. But it is true that the devil lies in the details.

Before anyone screams foul, I first came to this information from a site called BALLOT ACCESS NEWS, founded by Richard Winger, a Libertarian. I didn't first come to this information from a Democratic source. Winger is outstanding at finding the smaller, less reported stories that the MSM sometimes ignores and then bringing them to light.

So, here's the link that brought me eventually to a New York Times link:

Ballot Access News - Poll Shows Trump Enjoys More Support Among Independent Voters than Among Registered Republicans

This New York Times story says in the 8th paragraph from the bottom that Donald Trump enjoys more support among registered independents than he does among registered Republicans.

So, I went to and read the NYT link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/us/politics/why-donald-trump-wont-fold-polls-and-people-speak.html

And indeed, there is some interesting information there.

First, the NYT story indicates that with public polling, the data is showing that Trump is winning in pretty much every category among Rs and R-leaning Is.

Here is a good quote vis-a-vis PUBLIC polling. It is large, but less than 1/4 of the total article:

A review of public polling, extensive interviews with a host of his supporters in two states and a new private survey that tracks voting records all point to the conclusion that Mr. Trump has built a broad, demographically and ideologically diverse coalition, constructed around personality, not substance, that bridges demographic and political divides. In doing so, he has effectively insulated himself from the consequences of startling statements that might instantly doom rival candidates.

In poll after poll of Republicans, Mr. Trump leads among women, despite having used terms like “fat pigs” and “disgusting animals” to denigrate some of them. He leads among evangelical Christians, despite saying he had never had a reason to ask God for forgiveness. He leads among moderates and college-educated voters, despite a populist and anti-immigrant message thought to resonate most with conservatives and less-affluent voters. He leads among the most frequent, likely voters, even though his appeal is greatest among those with little history of voting.

The unusual character of Mr. Trump’s coalition by no means guarantees his campaign will survive until next year’s primaries, let alone beyond. The diversity of his coalition could even be its undoing, if his previous support for liberal policies and donations to Democrats, for example, undermine his support among conservatives. And in the end, the polling suggests, Mr. Trump will run into a wall: Most Republicans do not support his candidacy and seem unlikely ever to do so. Even now, more say they definitely would not vote for him than say they support him.

But the breadth of Mr. Trump’s coalition is surprising at a time of religious, ideological and geographic divisions in the Republican Party. It suggests he has the potential to outdo the flash-in-the-pan candidacies that roiled the last few Republican nominating contests. And it hints at the problem facing his competitors and the growing pressure on them to confront him, as several, like Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, are starting to do.

His support is not tethered to a single issue or sentiment: immigration, economic anxiety or an anti-establishment mood. Those factors may have created conditions for his candidacy to thrive, but his personality, celebrity and boldness, not merely his populism and policy stances, have let him take advantage of them.

Tellingly, when asked to explain support for Mr. Trump in their own words, voters of varying backgrounds used much the same language, calling him “ballsy” and saying they admired that he “tells it like it is” and relished how he “isn’t politically correct.”

Trumpism, the data and interviews suggest, is an attitude, not an ideology.

I think the last sentence pretty much sums it up and I wouldn't be surprised if "Trumpism" becomes the word of the year for 2015.

Later in the article, the NYT write-up indicates information is what given by a private, not public, polling firm called "Civis Analytics" (which I will link to later) and indeed, it also shows some interesting information.

Just to be crystal clear, when we are talking about Independent voters in this case, we are not talking about Independents in the country as a whole, but rather, only Independents who have self-identified as Republican-leaning, as opposed to Democratic-leaning Independents or Independents who want nothing to do with either party at all.


So, here we go:

New data provided to The Times by Civis Analytics, a firm aligned with Democrats and founded by the former chief analytics officer of the Obama re-election campaign, shows that there is merit to those concerns, but not enough to call Mr. Trump’s lead into question. Curious about the Republican primary landscape, the firm decided to see what it could learn from its own survey, at first for internal research purposes.

Unlike most public polls, Civis’s relied on a list of registered voters that included their voting histories, allowing it to measure Mr. Trump’s support among those who regularly cast ballots in primary elections.

The survey, which was conducted on landlines Aug. 10 through Wednesday and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points, showed Mr. Trump’s support at 16 percent among registered voters who identified as Republicans. That tally is less than any public poll in more than a month, but still more than any other candidate. Ben Carson was at 11 percent, and Mr. Bush at 10 percent.

A poll weighted to reflect the characteristics of the adult population, like most conducted for national media organizations, would have shown Mr. Trump faring some two points better than the Civis data, which was adjusted to reflect the characteristics of registered voters who identify as Republicans. The survey included 757 Republican-leaning respondents, considerably more than other polls of the Republican presidential field.

“In reality his real support is less than what we see in the polling today,” said Masahiko Aida, lead survey scientist for Civis.

The Civis poll also hinted at a potential problem for Mr. Trump: states that allow only registered Republicans to participate in nominating contests, including Iowa and Nevada. He was at 14 percent among registered Republicans in the states with party registration, compared to 18 percent of the voters who were unaffiliated with a party.

So, according to Civis (D/Private) it's

Trump 16
Carson 11
Bush 10

margin: Trump +5 over Carson, +6 over Bush.

That's a considerably slimmer margin that we just saw with the Reuters poll that came out last Friday. It showed Trump at almost 32 and Bush at just over 15.

Back to the Civis poll: in states with closed primaries/caucuses (thinking specifically of Nevada and Iowa), where only R's are allowed to vote and not R-leaning I's, Trump is only at 14%. And among R-leaning I's, it's 18%. In other words, R-leaning I's are currently bolstering his standing in the nomination polling, which will be a help in states with semi-open or open primaries, but not in states with closed primaries.

Now, who is Civis?

Civis Analytics

About | Civis Analytics

Blog | Civis Analytics

Meet Civis — The data science platform | Civis Analytics

Yepp, these are true numbers-geeks, and a lot of them. They are helping to revolutionize polling in a couple of ways, especially with an interesting, intuitive, predictive software. They are not just an excel-worksheet based firm.

Because Civis is a private (and probably, internal) pollster, I don't log the results, but the sideline data here is interesting to read. In fact, it's quite interesting.


BTW, for your interest, here is very good 2-minute video about Trump's appeal:

Video: The Keys to Trump’s Appeal


I know that that was a lot to read, but there is something here for everyone to think about, especially Trump supporters.

-Stat

 

[Derideo_Te]

I am not surprised to learn that T-Rump has support amongst Independents that lean republican. Many of them are disaffected Republicans who left because of McCain and Romney. They didn't want to be part of the "establishment GOP" or give it any support so they left and yes, they contributed to the growth of the Independents and the shrinking of the GOP.

What I don't see is T-Rump making inroads into the moderate Independents that he would need to win the general. Yes, he is now a serious candidate to win the GOP nomination and with these polls I see an even greater likelihood of him running 3rd party if he doesn't get the nomination.

Nothing has actually changed about T-Rump's appeal and I think that the young man in the video who asked the question about his policies is not alone in looking for the substance behind the bluster. So far it has been AWOL. And I really don't believe that T-Rump will stand up under intense media scrutiny.

On the lighter side the appeal video was immediately followed by this one about a 15 year old Iowa farm boy who registered as a candidate under the name Deez Nuts and he asked the NYT to start polling him.

Video: Social Chatter: Deez Nuts For President

In essence DN is polling mid pack on the Republican side which says volumes about just how insane the whole GOP circus has become this year. How can anyone take them seriously?

 

[Statistikhengst]

I am not surprised to learn that T-Rump has support amongst Independents that lean republican. Many of them are disaffected Republicans who left because of McCain and Romney. They didn't want to be part of the "establishment GOP" or give it any support so they left and yes, they contributed to the growth of the Independents and the shrinking of the GOP.

What I don't see is T-Rump making inroads into the moderate Independents that he would need to win the general. Yes, he is now a serious candidate to win the GOP nomination and with these polls I see an even greater likelihood of him running 3rd party if he doesn't get the nomination.

Nothing has actually changed about T-Rump's appeal and I think that the young man in the video who asked the question about his policies is not alone in looking for the substance behind the bluster. So far it has been AWOL. And I really don't believe that T-Rump will stand up under intense media scrutiny.

On the lighter side the appeal video was immediately followed by this one about a 15 year old Iowa farm boy who registered as a candidate under the name Deez Nuts and he asked the NYT to start polling him.

View attachment 48096

Video: Social Chatter: Deez Nuts For President

In essence DN is polling mid pack on the Republican side which says volumes about just how insane the whole GOP circus has become this year. How can anyone take them seriously?

I've really avoided any discussion of Deez Nutz at all because I sensed immediately that this is a prank and pollsters should not be polling pranksters. LOL...

 

[Mertex]

Someone shouted "White Power" at Trump's Alabama rally.....says a lot about the people that support him.

‘White Power!’ Donald Trump’s Alabama rally features folks who want to shoot ‘aliens’

 

[Derideo_Te]

Someone shouted "White Power" at Trump's Alabama rally.....says a lot about the people that support him.

‘White Power!’ Donald Trump’s Alabama rally features folks who want to shoot ‘aliens’

Exactly!

T-Rump is attracting the disaffected Tea Party crowd. The comments in the video gave me the impression that they are just the TP'ers without the funny clothes and the teabags hanging from their hats. Maybe T-Rump could raise campaign funds selling his discontinued merchandise to them.

 

[RedTeamTex]

Nice post, Statistik.

I have a hard time seeing "tea party" lining up for Trump. Sure these folks largely fall in the spectrum of 'too conservative for Republican,' who have no qualms about clogging up the usual pipes of politics. Yet they are serious people with relatively informed and cogent positions, if not sound political strategy. Trump is not reliably conservative and no real Tea Partier is unaware of that. None of them are going to vote Trump over Cruz. Trump's appeal is to the low-information static that will largely crawl back into the woodwork long before called upon to the intellectual and organizational challenge figuring out how & where to actually show up to vote in a primary. The Tea Party (quite experienced at primary voting) would be acknowledging defeat and committing suicide by supporting the ideological absurdity of Trump. Not likely.

(However, notice the pageantry in place now...Cruz publicly cozies up to Trump and acts deferential to his "leadership." They do joint events. When T turns over the reins, Cruz "inherits" his natural base intact and Trump gets to take [enormous] credit for it. 'The Apprentice,' indeed!)