McCain's Collapse

News broke today of a major shakeup of the McCain presidential campaign. This on the heels of a second poor financial quarter and a mere $2 million cash on hand. The financial and staff disaster however simply reflects the trouble the campaign was in with voters.

While McCain was widely said in 2005 and 2006 to be the front runner for the Republican nomination, he consistently polled a few points behind Rudy Giuliani in that period. Since January of 2007, McCain's national level of support from Republican voters has steadily declined from nearly 25% to just over 15%.

That national decline would be bad enough for any campaign, but the situation in the early primary states has been even worse. The most dramatic failure has been in South Carolina, the state where McCain invested most heavily and where he did the most politically to mend fences demolished in the 2000 campaign. McCain's frequent visits, staff allocation and public shifts to reposition himself vis a vis South Carolina political issues and political and religious leaders initially paid off in support from around 40% of Republicans in the state as of early 2006. But the trajectory of support there has been profoundly down, standing today at around 17%.

In New Hampshire, the launch pad of the 2000 campaign, McCain has also steadily declined, from around 35% in early 2006 to half that--- 18%--- now.

In Iowa, the state McCain wrote off in 2000 and initially tried to win this time, support has crashed from 25% to under 10%.

And in Florida, the big state that moved up its primary this year, McCain has dropped from a high of 27% to 12%.

The collapse of campaigns can be attributed to poor strategy, poor management, poor fundraising. But the more fundamental cause is lack of support, a failure to connect with voters. The trajectory of the McCain campaign has been clear in these data for some time. Republican voters were simply not embracing the McCain candidacy. That was evident during his "front runner" period when journalists couldn't believe Giuliani's lead in the polls meant McCain wasn't the front runner. It became more evident as Giuliani surged in early 2007 while McCain started to decline. And it is stunningly clear now as Republican voters have been deserting the campaign in state after state after state. (Note Giuliani's trajectory is now similar to McCain's. A topic for another day.)

Maybe different management would have raised more money and spent it less profligately, but only a message more attuned to Republican voters' preferences and concerns could have changed this campaign. Given McCain's positions over the past 7 years, perhaps no message could have been crafted that would have bonded voters to him. Only a miracle of Biblical proportions is likely to bring this one back.

Pres08: National Support For McCain Still Slips

The trend estimate of support for Senator John McCain for the Republican nomination continues to slip downward. This trend has been apparent for a while, but shows signs of accelerating rather than stabilizing. The new Gallup Poll taken 4/2-5/07 has McCain at 16%, and the Gallup release notes this is a decline from previous Gallup data. But the decline is more widespread than just a single poll by a single organization. Since January 1, Sen. McCain's support has been on a downward trajectory. This loss of popular support in national polls has come as Giuliani has moved steadily upward and other potential challengers (Gingrich and Romney) have seen modest, if steady, increases.

The finance performance of the McCain campaign raised questions about his support among significant Republican donors, but the continuing negative trend in popular support may prove more deadly. McCain is set to "re-launch" his campaign with a new round of speeches and appearances. The question is whether he can sell his support for the war (something Republicans should be receptive to) and his conservative record (generally strong) to an audience that despises his campaign finance reform bill and sees him as too much of a loose canon.

Were it not for campaign finance, which many conservatives hold bitterly against McCain, and perhaps his support for restrictions on interrogations, McCain should be able to appeal to Republicans, certainly more so than Giuliani. But so far little if anything seems to be working for McCain. If the relaunch fails, McCain's fall threatens to move Gingrinch into second place among Republicans nationally. (Or perhaps that should be Fred Thompson, at 10% in the new Gallup poll, but with too little polling yet for a trend estimate.)

Giuliani Leads; Press finally notices

Since November 2004, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has consistently led Arizona Senator John McCain for the Republican presidential nomination. Giuliani has led in 46 of 57 national polls since then, with 5 more polls tied. McCain has led in only 10.5% of all polls. In the last two months, the size of that lead has increased substantially.

Despite this consistent polling result, newspaper stories have overwhelmingly referred to McCain as the "front runner", while seldom saying the same about Giuliani. Since May 1, 2005, 555 articles in Lexis/Nexis's database of US News have mentioned "front runner" and McCain, Giuliani or both in the same sentence. In 65% of these article, McCain is connected to front runner, while Giuliani's name has not appeared. Only 10% of articles mentioned Giuliani but not McCain, while 25% of articles mentioned both. (I made this point in a December post, here, before the current surge in Giuliani support.)
























Only in the last month (and especially the first week of March, when these data end) have reporters responded to the polling data, but in a somewhat misleading form. A number of reports have framed the increased support for Giuliani as a surge from behind, when in fact he was leading all along, albeit by a small margin. Yet that small margin was quite consistent if reporters had bothered to look at the data.

A clear reason for this emphasis on McCain has been Giuliani's slow start on staff and campaigning. In addition reporter's (and informed observers') view that Giuliani's social issue positions represented a large barrier to obtaining the nomination, has led many to discount the import of the polling lead in characterizing the race. And indeed, these may ultimately doom his campaign. But that isn't what the data say now, or have been saying for over two years.

But the recent polls should serve as a warning that sometimes you should pay attention to the data. The apparent surprise at Giuliani's recent lead, expressed in many articles, should not be so surprising at all if the data were taken seriously.

I am not making an argument that Giuliani's lead now is a prediction of the future. I AM saying that to understand political dynamics you must look at them in the context of all the evidence, in this case all the polling data. Reporters would produce better informed stories if they did so.