Trump's Poll Numbers: 70-80% Of Republicans Support Someone Else

I've been frustrated with the media frenzy over Trump.  So what if he's leading the polls right now?  For example, this graphic from Real Clear Politics, has Trump averaging in recent polls 26.7:

click to enlarge and focus

I tried to find the question that voters were asked, but I suspect different polls were slightly different. The assumption is that they were asked whom they would vote for (today?  at the primary?), but another poll I found asked who they thought would be the Republican candidate.  There the numbers for Trump were much higher.

But really, 26.7 percent means that 73.3 percent are supporting other candidates.  And these are just Republicans.  It would be more than that if all the other voters - Democrats and undeclared - were taken into account.   As other candidates drop from the race, how many will move over to Trump?

We can't predict for sure anything at this point - the numbers are relatively low (spread among a lot of candidates) and lots will happen between now and when someone gets the actual Republican nomination.

The media, rather than looking deeply into the important issues and how the candidates' statements jibe with the truth (yes, they are doing some of that) are highlighting the outrageous, merely spurring the other candidates on to be more extreme.  The link goes to what sounds much more like a blog post than something from the New York Times.


So as I was looking up numbers for this post, I got the the fivethirtyeight blog  (posted November 23, 2015), which was saying pretty much what I was thinking, but with much more statistical rigor:

 Right now, he [Trump] has 25 to 30 percent of the vote in polls among the roughly 25 percent of Americans who identify as Republican. (That’s something like 6 to 8 percent of the electorate overall, or about the same share of people who think the Apollo moon landings were faked.) As the rest of the field consolidates around him, Trump will need to gain additional support to win the nomination. That might not be easy, since some Trump actions that appeal to a faction of the Republican electorate may alienate the rest of it. Trump’s favorability ratings are middling among Republicans (and awful among the broader electorate).

All this fuss about what 6 to 8 percent of the overall electorate want?  Puts it in a much different light.

So, forget the polls and the attention seeking antics, and read up on the issues.  For instance here's a giant climate change meeting (COP21) in Paris starting Monday.  Do you know what COP21 stands for?  Here's some help from Radio France Internationale:

"The COP21-UNFCC is a convenient and abridged acronym for an international conference and summit due to take place in Paris, France from 30 November to 11 December 2015. COP21 stands for the 21st Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change."