When people talk about the polls in this GOP race, the focus is invariably on "who would you vote for?" I think this is misleading for a couple reasons. First, if favors personality over policy. People who support Trump, support him because he's Trump: they like him personally and there's nobody else quite like him in the field. People who support Jeb, however, may be just as likely to support Walker or Kasich, and so their vote gets split.
Granted, in our current electoral process, that is often enough to push one candidate over the top, which is why third-party candidates make people nervous. But because the primary elections are spread out over time, candidates are going to start dropping out, and support will begin to coalesce.
If we want to talk about which candidates have the most support from the GOP electorate, it seems to me that it makes a lot more sense to talk about favorables: not "who do you like best?" but "who would you be satisfied with?" If we look at the favorables in the recent Monmouth poll, the picture looks a little different.
Here are the favorables, unfavorables, and difference for the 17 candidates in the poll, along with the % of people who would vote for that particular candidate. I've sorted it by favorables instead of by vote. I placed a star next to the top 10 candidates in each column.
Candidate |
Fav % |
Unfav % |
Difference |
Vote %
|
Rubio |
54* |
11 |
43* |
4*
|
Trump |
52* |
35 |
17 |
26*
|
Bush |
52* |
30 |
22* |
12*
|
Cruz |
52* |
14 |
38* |
6*
|
Huckabee |
51* |
23 |
28* |
6*
|
Walker |
50* |
10 |
40* |
11*
|
Paul |
48* |
23 |
25* |
4*
|
Perry |
46* |
21 |
25* |
2
|
Carson |
45* |
10 |
35* |
5*
|
Jindal |
36* |
16 |
20* |
1
|
Santorum |
31 |
24 |
7 |
1
|
Christie |
30 |
45 |
-15 |
4*
|
Fiorina |
30 |
11 |
19* |
2
|
Kasich |
27 |
14 |
13 |
3*
|
Graham |
18 |
36 |
-18 |
1
|
Pataki |
12 |
31 |
-19 |
0
|
Gilmore |
8 |
15 |
-7 |
0
|
From this data, I would say that Rubio won this particular poll: he has the highest favorables, and the largest fav/unfav difference. Trump is tied for second-highest favorables with Bush and Cruz, but his unfavorables are large enough that he doesn't make the top ten when you look at fav/unfav.
If Fox went with favorables instead of "who would you vote for", then Perry (46%) and Jindal (36%) would be in, while Christie (30%) and Kasich (27%) would be out. If we went by fav-unfav, then Perry (25%), Jindal (20%), and Fiorina (19%) would be in, while Trump (17%), Kasich (13%), and Christie (-15%) would be out.
Call Trump the frontrunner if you want, but saying he has the most support of all the GOP candidates...that's not fair.