http://theiowarepublican.com/2015/iowans-down-on-bush-and-christie/The latest Iowa Poll from the Des Moines Register has gotten plenty of ink in national news publications. The poll confirms what was on display a couple weeks ago at Congressman Steve King’s Annual Freedom Summit – Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is an early favorite for the 2016 Iowa Caucuses.
While Walker’s strong poll numbers stood out in a crowded field of candidates, perhaps more newsworthy was the number of big name candidates who’s support was underwhelming to say the least. Even though Walker was the talk of the town after the King event, Texas Senator Ted Cruz has been pleasing Iowa audiences for a couple of years now. Surprisingly, only five percent of respondents said that Cruz was their first choice for president in the caucuses.
Cruz wasn’t the only surprise. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the perceived national frontrunner in the 2016 Republican race only garnered eight percent. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie mustered support from only four percent of respondents. Those numbers are shocking, and when you peel back the onion and look at the favorable and unfavorable numbers it’s easy to see that Bush and Christie have a ton of work to do if they have any visions of being competitive in the Iowa caucuses.
Walker had the strongest net favorability rating in the Des Moines Register’s Iowa Poll with a +48 score (60 percent favorable compared to 12 percent unfavorable). A big chunk of the potential 2016 field has strong net favorability scores. Rand Paul had a +39, while Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee and Rick Perry followed closely with +38. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz each posted a net favorability number of +37.
From there the bottom falls out. Bush, who is known to 89 percent of respondents, was viewed favorably by 46 percent of respondents, and unfavorably by 43 percent, giving him just a +3 favorability rating. The news was even worse for Christie, who is underwater with a -19 score. Only 36 percent of respondents had a favorable view of Christie, while a whooping 56 percent viewed him unfavorably. The only good news in the poll for Governor Christie is that he didn’t score the lowest of all potential 2016 candidates. That honor goes to Donald Trump, with an amazing -42 percent rating.
The negative feeling towards Bush and Christie surprised me, so I dug out a poll that TheIowaRepublican.com commissioned in June of 2011 about the 2012 presidential field to have a comparison. Interestingly enough, we included Governor Christie in our poll since a number of influential Iowans were publically encouraging him to run for President in 2012. Christie’s numbers couldn’t be more different. While Christie had a -19 net favorability rating in the Register’s poll, in 2011, the TIR poll had him with a +38 score, with 48 percent of Iowa Republicans having a favorable opinion of him, while only 10 percent had an unfavorable view of the outspoken New Jersey Governor.
Christie is the same type of politician today as he was four years ago, and he’s invested a lot of time and political capital in Iowa over the past four years, so what gives? First, Christie’s shtick may be getting old, especially when he doesn’t have many tangible conservative victories to point to in New Jersey. Second, his warm embrace of Obama near the end of the 2012 campaign during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy angered many conservatives.
The most similarly situated 2011 candidate to Christie today would be Newt Gingrich, who had a -14 net favorability rating, with 38 percent having a favorable view of him at the time and 52 percent having an unfavorable view. At the time, Gingrich’s campaign was in complete disarray. News stories about Gingrich’s line of credit at Tiffany & Co were everywhere, and soon many on Gingrich’s staff would quit while he and his wife were on vacation in Italy.
Like any poll question, favorability numbers offer us just a snapshot in time of how Iowa Republicans view the potential 2016 candidates. Still, one has to wonder how on earth Christie and Bush turn their numbers around? For Bush, issues like common core and immigration have him crossways with many Republican voters. But perhaps what’s at work is an anti-establishment, anti-entitlement electorate that isn’t in the mood to listen to who the consultant class is excited about.
With Christie and Bush not having numbers that suggest that they are the frontrunners, one has to wonder how long will it be before the powerbrokers who control the purse strings will go looking for a more popular establishment candidate. Or perhaps those people could get behind someone else like Walker, who seems to be more widely accepted than either Christie and Bush currently are.
Never before have we seen such a weak frontrunner, and perhaps that is why Romney spent the past three weeks contemplating a third presidential campaign. Conservatives welcomed the idea of Romney running again because it would have further splintered the moderate vote in Republican primaries, but after looking at these current numbers, maybe they don’t need Romney’s help.
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Down as in running away. With guys like Walker, Perry and others jumping in, the usual strategy of the mediocre moderate to play off the wild-eyed clown show isn't working anymore, and they are a little panicked I imagine.
