Donald Trump is
sure he knows everything, even though he's more like a
Know-Nothing. He started his campaign by taking
Republican minority outreach and
nuking it beyond recognition. He
insulted Senator John McCain, patron saint of the
tire-swingin' press. He
went up against Fox News, and they backed down. He's committed the sin greater than all sins: mentioning (horrors!)
raising some taxes on the wealthy. Donald Trump doesn't care. He doesn't give a damn. He'll grab any third rail he can find, and before anybody has time to react, he'll grab another. He's the
honey badger of the GOP.
And so far, all he's done is rise in the polls. In fact, he's now been climbing longer than any of the 2012 Not-Romney flavors-of-the-month. The other candidates this year have been patient all summer, millions at their beck and call, just waiting for the inevitable implosion. But all that has come has been a stream of insults from the Donald. The GOP is cowed and cowering.
Even more remarkable, Trump started the spring almost universally known among the Republican electorate, but with terrible favorability ratings. In a few short months, his numbers have completely reversed—a dramatic, unheard-of occurrence.
Can he keep on this way? Could he possibly end up winning the Republican nomination? The short answer is, who knows? But come below the fold for more details.
The horse race
The first graph at the top of the post shows how Trump's polling surge compares to the 2012 Not-Romneys. Each line starts when a candidate's support first moved above 10 percent nationally. Using this metric, Trump has outlasted each of the Not-Romneys. And although his rise has been slower, it hasn't stopped yet, and he's reached greater heights than either Santorum or Gingrich—in a much more crowded field of seventeen. For all we know, though, he may be at his peak right now, ready for gravity to reclaim him.
The numbers in detail
When you look at head-to-head polling, artificially winnowing the GOP field to just Trump and one other candidate, Trump wins against every Republican tested except Ben Carson. He's up 59-34 against Jeb Bush. But then, Romney was losing to Santorum 32-56 in February 2012, and we know how that story ended.
Still, Trump's support is more uniform throughout the country than Santorum's was. Santorum never came close to leading in New Hampshire or South Carolina; Trump is currently well ahead in both the former and the latter.
The favorability
This is a stunner: I don't know that I've ever seen favorability numbers change from deeply negative to positive like this before. These numbers are just among Republicans, of course. The GOP voters—they like the crazy. They really, really like the crazy.
The attention
(click to enlarge)
Take a look at the
search volume for Donald Trump. He's gotten more attention than Mitt Romney at the height of the 2012
general election campaign, or John McCain in 2008. The only Republican who's had a higher peak: yes,
Sarah Palin. It's nuts.
The end
Although there's plenty of time for Trump to flame out, and there's plenty of reasons to think he will, based on his propensities and past GOP voter behavior, there's no reason that he must. Even if he remains strong in the polls, however, things can change quite quickly once the first votes are cast. Or, like Romney, he could hold on as one after another of the other Republicans rises to challenge him and gets swatted down. He's already squashed Marco Rubio's and Scott Walker's boomlets; Ben Carson, apparently, is the next contender in line. Only time will tell. And what a time it will be.