What Are Trump’s Chances Of Winning The GOP Primary?

Is the 2024 republican presidential primary already finished? If you just look at the polls, you would be forgiven to think it. Consider the state of the States: several polls published last week have shown that former President Donald Trump leader in Iowa (with 42% of the government of the government of Florida, Ron Desantis and Southern Carolina, Tim Scott, 9%), New Hampshire (50% against Desantis at 11 years old and Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy at 10%) and (at 48% versus around 14% for Desantis and Scott) and Southern Carolina (48% versus 14% for Desantis and Scott). And in national surveys, Trump currently has the support of 50% of GOP primary voters – a slide of 2 percentage points since the primary debate of the GOP last Wednesday, but still a dominant advance on his opponents.

However, despite these dominant margins, our study of the history of primary polls suggests that it is still too early to completely random Trump’s competitors. Here, in Fivethirtyeight, we are largely believed in the predictive power of the survey of early elections – where it is justified. Although we have noticed that the first national surveys tend to predict that will gain the primaries relatively well, there is a ton of volatility which prevents us from providing the type of clarity that analysts want forecasts. At this stage of the 1992 democratic primary, for example, the future president Bill Clinton had not even announced his campaign. And at this stage of the primary democratic campaign of 2020, the former South Bend, Indiana, the mayor Pete Buttigieg only collected 8% of the Urns of Iowa; In February, he won 25% of the popular vote in the Caucus.

To take into account this uncertainty, I wrote a gross statistical model to translate the averages of national survey at this stage of the campaigns spent in the chances of winning the presidential appointments. This model gives us a way to answer a key question of polls analysis: how long Candidate X Direct historical movement beaches and measurement error in the ballot boxes? During the editorial staff, this model gives Trump about 78% chance of winning the appointment (seems familiar?) Based on the polls. But there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding how much we can trust the surveys to produce a reliable signal in this primary – the biggest problem being that, historically, only a handful of candidates interrogated around 50% at the national level at this stage of the cycle. Thanks to this small sample size, Trump’s “real” probability of victory could be as low as 54%.

Trump is the big favorite in the GOP primary

Before you get into the operation of the model, let’s quickly take stock of the state of the race. Trump is currently 50% in our average of national republican primary polls. DESANTIS, his closest competitor, is a distant second place with 15%. Ramaswamy is currently taking advantage of a little rebound: in the last month, it went from 6 to 10% in national polls.

Trump’s advance is not only important; It was also extremely durable. This year, he faced several scandals that we expect to harm his voting numbers. However, at least in the race for horses, it has resisted the storm extremely well. After each of the four indictments was transmitted against him this year, Trump’s support in national polls has remained flat or even increased. During all this time, his main opponent, Desantis, has not lost ground.

To put the scale of the example of Trump in perspective, I ran the first national surveys of all the presidential appointments since 1972 thanks to our average model of main survey. During this period, only four non-partys (out of 124 for which we have the first national survey data) interviewed at Trump level (50%) or better at the end of August of the year preceding the elections.

The most recent was the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who in August 2015 Songment 55% nationwide. She won roughly the same share of the popular voting cumulative for primaries and democratic caucus that year. Before that, the former vice-president Al Gore. In August 1999, Gore asked 62% among primary democratic voters. His only opponent, the former New Jersey senator, Bill Bradley, was at that time at 30%. Bradley presented himself as the liberal alternative to Gore – but in a party which had just seen with pleasure eight years of a presidency of Clinton, Gore was practically a shoo -in and ended up winning 75% of the national popular vote.

At this stage of the Republican presidential campaign of 1996, the former head of the majority of the Senate, Bob Dole, thought of 52%. His closest opponent, the former Texas senator, Phil Gramm, questioned 39 lower percentage points – almost the exact margin enjoyed by Trump enjoys today. Dole then won the Iowa caucus at only 26% at 23% compared to Pat Buchanan, a conservative commentator who was then almost equal to the third place at the national level with Gramm (who won only 9% in IOWA), according to our historic survey.

Finally, there is former senator Ted Kennedy, who presented himself for the presidential democratic appointment against outgoing president Jimmy Carter in 1980. In August 1979, he questioned 66% among democratic voters, according to our average. But due to the luggage of a previous scandal, Kennedy failed to perform well in the first primaries and won only 37% of the cumulative popular vote in primaries and caucus the following year. Of the four highest candidates since 1972, he was the biggest lead at the end of the summer before the electoral year – and he is also the only one to lose the appointment.

This assessment suggests that Trump has a good chance of winning the appointment. We can use a logistic regression model to estimate the chances of a presidential candidate to win the head sign of his party given their survey numbers in August in progress. Based on this model, a generic presidential survey at Trump level today would have about 78% chance of winning the appointment of their party. These are good dimensions, but not a safe thing. (For reference, an 80% chance is just a little better than Clinton in the last weeks of the 2016 general elections.)

But there is still an opening for someone else

Of course, partly due to the small size of the sample, the primaries are notoriously difficult to predict. The method I used to manage the model itself produces a wide range of possible results – the probability that Trump wins reasonably vary from 54% to 93% – simply on the basis of the uncertainty of past surveys! In addition, primary forecast is probably particularly difficult this year, because the events of this appointment are very far from history events, which means that our models are less reliable. For example, Trump actually presents himself in primary as a outgoing president, a rare event in general, but above all given the circumstances in which he left his functions. Without forgetting that no other leading presidential candidate experienced four criminal indictments during their functions. The Paris markets – which have the advantage of watching data other than the survey – put Trump’s chances closer to 66%.

However, there is a big difference between a probable event and a safe thing. The chances of winning Trump today are close to what we would call “likely” or “probable” rather than “certain” or “very likely”. Believe it or not, there is still a decent shot, one of its rivals could win.

Based on the place where they work today, my raw model says that Desantis and Ramaswamy have respectively 13% and 8% chance of winning the appointment from today. The other of Trump’s competitors currently questioning more than 1% in our national average – the former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, former vice -president Mike Pence, the former governor of New Jersey Chrisie and Scott – have about 4 to 5% of chances.

If one of Trump’s competitors takes the lead, it is likely that they do it by marking key upheavals in the voting states. They can look at Trump’s figures in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina somewhat optimistic; Trump is a little lower in these states than in the country. Desantis is a natural candidate for an upheaval; Last week, a Fivethirtyeight / Washington Post / Ipsos survey revealed that 51% of Republicans said they were still planning to vote for him. In addition, among the Republicans, the Governor of Florida is considered to be about as favorable as Trump, if you adapt the share of the Republicans who have no opinion on him. Cases for Ramswamy and Scott also revolve around these notes; The two men have high clear favorability ratings despite the majority of the Republicans who have not yet made an opinion about them. However, this good will only provides the basics of a bump in the polls, not the catalyst for one.

Make no mistake: Trump will be difficult to beat his Republican opponents. He has a large base of support and a smaller but intensely devoted group of followers who think he cannot hurt. But it is not inevitable.