CA-NSON Opinion Strategies: Walker ahead

[Mr. Morden]

California is Walker Country. The Golden State will be key to the presidency.

The nomination will likely already be decided by the time CA votes.

I don't think so this time. The GOP primary in California will be the most intense since 2008 when McCain and Romney were fighting for California supremacy.

The 2008 California primary was in February, on Super Tuesday, but for 2012 they moved it back to June, and there's every indication that it'll remain in June.

[Mr. Morden]

They also do a poll test in which they limit the options to the following eight candidates:

Walker 23%
Bush 14%
Huckabee 11%
Cruz 8%
Rubio 8%
Paul 7%
Christie 6%
Fiorina 3%

In the larger sample of candidates, Walker leads among both men and women, as well as voters over 45 years old.  Carson and Paul tie for the lead among voters under 45.

Bush leads among both Asians and Hispanics, but those are very tiny subsamples.

[Mr. Morden]

I do actually think that at some point in the campaign, Fiorina will have some kind of media moment, where she gets some decent coverage just by virtue of being the only woman on the debate stage, but I'm not too optimistic about her being able to capitalize on that.

Of course, this hinges on her being invited to the debates, which I guess might not happen if she doesn't manage 1% in national polls.

[Mr. Morden]

I do actually think that at some point in the campaign, Fiorina will have some kind of media moment, where she gets some decent coverage just by virtue of being the only woman on the debate stage, but I'm not too optimistic about her being able to capitalize on that.

Of course, this hinges on her being invited to the debates, which I guess might not happen if she doesn't manage 1% in national polls.

The media seems to pick and choose who they dignify as "serious candidates". For example, I distinctly remember Huntsman and Perry not breaking the polling threshold at certain points in 2011/2012, yet they were invited to the debates anyway. But they didn't invite people like Johnson and Roemer.

But that was when the media organizations, in collaboration with the local party groups hosting the debates, controlled the invitations.  Now that the RNC has seized control of the debaters, Priebus has floated the idea of the party itself setting some kind of polling threshold.  Though he acknowledged that it would have to be a very low threshold for the early debates, or you risk never giving any longshots the chance to catch up.