The Cook Political Report, run by Charlie Cook, is one of the most well-respected political organizations in the country — not to mention one of the most impressively accurate in its electoral predictions. So we should all sit up and take note when they publish an article by their national editor, Amy Walter, with this sentence:
At the end of the day, when you put all the assets and liabilities on the table, it’s hard to see anyone but Rubio, Bush or Walker as the ultimate nominee.
That may seem like a no-brainer to some of us, but in a field that will potentially have 20 challengers, for a prediction made ten months before any actual voting takes place, and for such a reputable organization, this qualifies as a pretty significant assertion.
The futures betting sites (or what’s left of them after Intrade got shut down after the last presidential election) generally agree with Ms. Walter. Sites like PredictWise and Betfair give the trio of Rubio, Bush, and Walker a combined 70% chance at the nomination. (Bush currently comes in at 31%, with Rubio at 20 and Walker at 19.) In fact, the only other two candidates who are even given more than a 2% shot are Rand Paul (4%) and Mike Huckabee (6%).
In the latest Quinnipiac poll (a survey where Rubio, Bush, and Walker have all taken a turn leading the pack in the past several months), we can see just how strong the support for the trio is: they are the only three candidates in double digits in the topline results. But it goes even further than that: when Bush supporters were asked who their second choice was, Rubio and Walker were the only ones in double digits again (at 18% and 12%, respectively). When Walker supporters were asked their second choice, Rubio and Bush again clock in as #1 and #2, with 20% and 12% respectively.
In other words, if you chop of one of the three heads of this hydra, the others will only get stronger.
That’s a good reason to predict that one of those three will end up as the Republican nominee. It’s also one of the reasons I will go on record as predicting this primary will be less divisive than many think it will be.
With twenty candidates, it’s easy to imagine a scenario where the party splinters, messy intraparty fighting breaks out, and a brokered convention becomes a reality in Cleveland. Every slice of the Republican electorate will back their preferred candidate until the bitter end, with primary and caucus winners walking away with less than 20% of the vote. It’s going to be a messy, bitter fight, right?
I don’t think so.
A comparison between our potentially massive 2016 field of candidates and the fields of 2008 and 2012 is quite instructive on this point. In 2008, the three-headed frontrunning hydra was comprised of Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Mitt Romney. None of the three satisfied the grassroots side of the party — who could forget the campaigns against “Rudy McRomney”? The unease with the three moderate frontrunners led to a shifting groundswell of support, first for Sam Brownback, then for Mike Huckabee, and finally in the epic failure that was the Fred Thompson campaign. Eventually, the activist side of the party gave in to McCain’s inevitable nomination, but not before Huckabee stayed in far longer than he should have (“I didn’t major in math, I majored in God,” anyone?), leaving lasting wounds in the party.
And in 2012, the field only had one legitimate frontrunner: it was Mitt Romney versus everyone else. Some commentators even referred to the GOP primary as “Mitt and the Munchkins.” The fact that Governor Romney had to expend so much effort, time, and resources to dispatch ridiculously weak candidates like Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich displayed again how deeply uneasy and dissatisfied the party was with the GOP frontrunner. The White Knight candidacy of Rick Perry is also illustrative of this fact; likewise, many folks were pining for Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour, or Chris Christie to enter the race late into the campaign.
Our 2016 frontrunners stand in stark contrast to those of 2008 and 2012. In fact, after two elections where “dissatisfied” was the word most often used to describe the field, the opposite might be said of 2016. At this early stage, it seems everyone could be quite satisfied. The establishment-type folks who never like Romney find a champion in Jeb Bush — but even if Bush falters, they are okay with Rubio and Walker. The grassroots folks who never trusted McCain or Romney are finding plenty to like in Walker and Rubio. Even if they may be backing Cruz or Huckabee or Perry right now, when those candidates fall short those voters are generally okay with Walker or Rubio as well.
In 2016, there will be little yearning for a white knight candidate — partially because the field will be so large to start with, but mostly because the three frontrunners are acceptable to the varying factions in the GOP. And so this primary campaign will take on a different look: there will be no “flavor-of-the-month” candidates this time around because voters will not be attempting to find acceptable alternatives. There will be the big three, Bush and Rubio and Walker, who will ebb and flow, but remain the big three. And there will be movement in the second and third tier candidates below them as candidates like Huckabee and Cruz and Perry catch fire and cool off, but that movement will do little to impact the ultimate outcome of the race.
As Amy Walter put it, at this point in the Republican primary race it’s hard to see anyone other than Rubio, Bush, or Walker as the ultimate nominee.