2016 Republican Nomination Poll - January 2016

[Senator Cris]

Who'll win?

[BlueSwan]

Fairly left field prediction here, but I'm gonna go with the guy that I always thought would be the 2016 candidate: Chris Christie. Looks like a very long shot at the moment, but it could have if:

1) First Cruz beats Trump in Iowa by a surprisingly large margin.

2) Trump has a meltdown over the Iowa loss and his alpha image is seriously dented.

3) In the dust from the Trump meltdown, Christie takes top spot in New Hampshire.

4) The Establishment totally embraces Christie (probably with great relief). Bush, Kasich and Rubio drops out.

5) Christie defeats Cruz over the long haul.

[Sir Mohamed]

Marco Rubio. The estbalishment will prevail in the end and stop Cruz and Trump. Rubio is the perfect figure to get it done.

He also has the best chances in the general election.

[ElectionsGuy]

Trump. I really, really hope Cruz wins, but I'm pessimistic. I also think there's a decent chance of Rubio, but if some of these people don't drop out soon enough, the establishment will get screwed.

[Oak Hills]

Trump.

[Phony Moderate]

Trump or Cruz. Of the 'establishment' candidates I think Christie has the best chance at this point.

[The Other Castro]

I'm bruisin' for a Cruzin'.

[JMT]

I think it will be either Rubio or Cruz, but if I had to pick one I would chose Cruz. Cruz will win the Iowa Caucus, lose NH to Trump, but Cruz could also win South Carolina following his Iowa win. Cruz also will do well with the SEC primary and later contests, which would lead to his nomination. 

[ShadowRocket]

Fairly left field prediction here, but I'm gonna go with the guy that I always thought would be the 2016 candidate: Chris Christie. Looks like a very long shot at the moment, but it could have if:

1) First Cruz beats Trump in Iowa by a surprisingly large margin.

2) Trump has a meltdown over the Iowa loss and his alpha image is seriously dented.

3) In the dust from the Trump meltdown, Christie takes top spot in New Hampshire.

4) The Establishment totally embraces Christie (probably with great relief). Bush, Kasich and Rubio drops out.

5) Christie defeats Cruz over the long haul.

I also went out on a limb and voted Christie. My thinking being similar to this at the moment. Admittedly, Cruz is probably more likely at the moment, but I think Trump will refuse to leave despite losing the early states. Subsequently splitting the anti-establishment vote with Cruz and allowing Christie to squeeze through.

[/]

Trump, but Cruz has about as equal a chance.

[Tender Branson]

Eventually, I think it will be Cruz.

After winning IA, he will obviously lose NH to Trump, but will probably surprise with a solid SC win and sweep the Super Tuesday states, with Trump falling further behind.

[Coolface Sock #42069]

Marco Rubio. The estbalishment will prevail in the end and stop Cruz and Trump. Rubio is the perfect figure to get it done.

He also has the best chances in the general election.

If the establishment ends up supporting Marco Rubio, that will represent a big win for the party base.

Right now, I don't see how anyone wins Iowa but Cruz. But a lot can happen in a month. Rubio is going to regret not spending more time campaigning in the early states.

That basically leaves two (maybe three) states for non-Cruz candidates: New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada. Any candidate who wants to beat out Cruz really needs to win in one of those states, particularly if that candidate is an "establishment" one since the March 1 primary is mostly in grassroots states.

I could see several candidates winning in New Hampshire, but there (surprisingly) isn't really a top candidate who has run primarily on fiscal conservatism. Trump or Christie could win. Rubio will have an uphill climb. Cruz could even win in the right circumstances since there are so many establishment candidates campaigning there. But Trump is obviously ahead by quite a margin as of now.

South Carolina could be a Trump state, but absent that, Rubio could win there due to vote-splitting and the fact that it seems he's actually tried there. But it could also be a Cruz state.

Regardless of what happens in Nevada, the battle lines will likely already be drawn: Cruz vs. Trump, Cruz vs. Rubio, or a Cruz coronation. An unlikely Christie win in Nevada after also winning New Hampshire would vault him to the position of leading challenger to Cruz if Cruz wins the other two early states.

[VPH]

I'm still saying Rubio. There will come a point very soon where Bush, Fiorina, and Kasich drop out to endorse Rubio. Walker will probably endorse him too.

[Suburbia]

Rubio, but Trump or Cruz could be possibilities.

[Asian Nazi]

A few months ago I would've said Rubio, but now I'm leaning towards Christie.  Maybe I'm overestimating the competence of the GOP establishment.  We'll see though.

[Senator Cris]

I'm starting to think Cruz will win. He's likely to win Iowa and if he wins Iowa, I think he'll win South Carolina too. Trump will win New Hampshire, maybe Nevada (it should be a toss-up with Cruz, but there is not a lot of polling from this state), but I think Cruz is favored on Super Tuesday.
With this calendar, I don't think the establishment candidate has good chances. I don't see a realistic path for Rubio. I don't see a realistic path for Christie too, but at least him has a good ground game in New Hampshire.

[BlueSwan]

Regardless of the current polls and there being only one month until Iowa, I still can't see Cruz winning the nomination. The guy is a total sleazeball. There's a reason why everybody who has ever encountered him seems to despise him. He is also an extremist who is the main guy responsible for an unpopular government shutdown. He also represents everything that is wrong about Washington: i.e. the party deadlock where absolutely nothing can get done.

He might be doing well now and he is the favourite to win Iowa, but I would be surprised if he's still in the top 2 come late february.

Having said that, he is a bit of a dream opponent for Clinton, so I shouldn't be complaining. However, I find the prospect of a potential president Cruz too scary to even want him as a seemingly easy opponent.

[mencken]

Regardless of the current polls and there being only one month until Iowa, I still can't see Cruz winning the nomination. The guy is a total sleazeball. There's a reason why everybody who has ever encountered him seems to despise him.

Mike Lee and Jeff Sessions seem to like him pretty well. If a profession is largely populated by hypocrites, would it be natural for someone with principles to be despised by their coworkers?

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If your goal is to drive North, being stationary is preferable to driving South. It is not Cruz's fault that the executive branch has overstepped its boundaries, and Cruz has done an amazing job as a single Senator to try to restore the constitutional balance.

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The main issue I see with Cruz is that he is a nerd. However, the acerbic Clinton is ill-suited to win any election that is a battle of personalities. Those hoping that Cruz will be the national equivalent of Todd Akin severely underestimate his intelligence.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

The main problem for Cruz is he comes across as insincere. I don't doubt somebody with his political views or even his actionscould win , but he seems like such a fake politician. He's clever, yes, (and certainly a better general candidate than, say, Yeb!) but he (like Carleton Sneed) gives off the vibe of a villain in a TV show made for kids. IN a personality driven election, your temperament matters.

Also "the executive branch overstepping its boundaries" is a pressing concern for about 3% of the population as a whole. That's why Trump doesn't bother with such phrases - why would a blue collar voter in Michigan give two craps about constitutional niceties? When people say "I don't like Washington" they mean many many many things, and the only way to grab all (or even the majority) of them is to be vague and non-committal in how you will change Washington (Obama and many other leaders around the world). Cruz has not been vague in his plans for Washington at all - and that will definitely put people off.

[LLR]

Jim Gilmore wins all 56 primaries by crazily wide margins after appearing with Lincoln Chafee on the campaign trail and telling America to go to the metric system.

[mencken]

The main problem for Cruz is he comes across as insincere. I don't doubt somebody with his political views or even his actionscould win , but he seems like such a fake politician. He's clever, yes, (and certainly a better general candidate than, say, Yeb!) but he (like Carleton Sneed) gives off the vibe of a villain in a TV show made for kids. IN a personality driven election, your temperament matters.

Again, how is Clinton going to exploit this?

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Since when does a blue collar voter in Michigan care about a few national parks being closed for a couple weeks three years ago?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Clinton has been doing this for decades, has a proven appeal to various important demographics, and she can use her husband as a proxy who does it in his sleep, as well as about six thousand other allies to be wheeled out to target specific groups.  Also Republicans (by which I mean the relatively sane GOP strategists who aren't dreaming they will somehow magically get Hispanics back by wearing ponchos or something) have a different target audience that they need to fire up than Democrats who need to fire up minority groups, who like the Clintons anyway; and young voters, who can be prodded in to the Clinton camp by Obama/Sanders' endorsements. Cruz has no proxies he can use, because everyone - aside from relatively anonymous Senators (said no blue-collar worker ever: "Oh Jeff Sessions likes him! That settles it!") - hates his guts.

Cruz will have to go out and prattle on to the GOP's target group - "enthusable" blue collar workers - whose main concerns are not "executive overreach" by any accounts (it's probably immigration and trade, two issues where Crux is less solidly "conservative" on than others) about arcane matters. There is a strong "small C conservative" vibe to Midwest America, but Cruz is not the man to pick it up - too "radical", not enough "conservative".

 The only groups that Cruz seems to be locking down are hardcore evangelicals (which matter less nowadays) and libertarians (which never have and never will matter). And he's going to have to pull it alone without the bulk of party machinery. I mean, one can present oneself as anti-both-parties and still win against all odds (indeed one man who certainly could is currently the GOP frontrunner) but it won't be Teddy.