The first GOP debates have taken place, and it’s time to re-evaluate the field. I’m going to step through the current contenders, update my quantitative analysis of the candidates, and discuss the fundamentals of the race. When an incumbent president runs for re-election, they have won about 65% of the time; on the historical fundamentals, there is around a 35% chance that a Republican becomes president in 2024.
If you want to read more details about the methodology, you can follow my reasoning in the previous articles in this series (1 2 3). Basically, what I’ve done is created a composite score based on approval ratings, head-to-head polling, past election performance, and historical precedent.
Who and how?
In this installment, I’m going to focus on the troubled but clear front-runner (Donald Trump) plus the eight candidates who qualified for the first debate. My general impressions of those candidates and some descriptions of them are here. This includes Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, Tim Scott, Asa Hutchinson, and Doug Burgum.
The model that I’m going to use is thorough but ultimately simple enough to explain piece by piece: I calculate a composite score based on history, polling, past elections, and the value of the candidates’ home state edge in the Electoral College.
Polling
How well would Ron DeSantis do against Joe Biden? The simplest and most direct way to guess this is to survey voters asking them if they would vote for Ron DeSantis or Joe Biden given the choice between the two. That is a head-to-head poll. Another useful form of polling is approval polling, which asks voters which candidates they like or approve of.
Most polls have trouble reaching a sample of voters that have the correct number of Democrats and Republicans, however. If Ron DeSantis wins 51% to 48% in one poll and Mike Pence loses 47% to 53% in a second poll, the first poll probably sampled more Republicans and the second poll probably sampled more Republicans.
If we want to compare Republican candidates to each other while also using head-to-head and approval polls, we have to look at polls that include multiple candidates, allowing us to adjust for the fact that different polls show different levels of baseline partisanship.
Subtracting off the minimum1 approval and disapproval does a good job of approximating the fact that some respondents will approve of all Republicans or disapprove of all Republicans. This adjusts for at least some level of baseline partisan variation from poll to poll.
Out of the nine candidates Vivek Ramaswamy comes out the best in favorability polls at around +5.1% adjusted net favorability.2 This may be because Vivek3 has no prior experience in office and has been more visible to Republicans than Democrats, especially in polling conducted earlier in the cycle. Worst off is former New Jersey governor Chris Christie at -21.1%, likely due to his extensive attacks on Donald Trump.
Head-to-head polls can be similarly adjusted, but show different results. They also generally show a consistent pattern I have noticed previously: Less-known candidates show higher variability from baseline partisan support. Biden is much better known than any Republican candidate other than Trump. It is also possible that some small but potentially critical number of Trump’s supporters will simply not support any other Republican.
With or without this adjustment, head-to-head polls suggest the strongest Republican candidates are Trump and Pence, while the weakest Republican candidates are Vivek (highest percentages against) and Christie (lowest percentages for). Vivek’s pattern of poor head-to-head polling with positive net favorability is similar to that of Pete Buttigieg during the 2020 cycle.
Past elections
With the notable exception of Trump and Vivek, the other Republican contenders discussed in this article have all stood for election in statewide elections. The baseline partisanship of these elections varies more dramatically from year to year and state to state than it does in randomized polls. Small states are more variable, so I use two measures of electoral performance, one based on percentage values and one based on the square root of the raw margin.
In this case, we can adjust for the baseline by comparing each Republican contender’s past performance at the ballot box with other elections happening at the same time. For example, in Florida in 2022, Ron DeSantis earned 140,000 more votes than Marco Rubio, while Rubio’s opponent earned 100,000 more votes than DeSantis’s opponent. In spite of a strong performance in a large state, DeSantis does not score first in this category.
DeSantis performed +1.8% above the Republican baseline in Florida in 2022. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie won re-election in 2013 by a 20-point margin in a state that usually elects Democrats.4 Christie’s track record at winning over swing voters is truly remarkable.
The poor performers in this category are Nikki Haley (who was elected by a large margin in South Carolina, but ran a net 8.8% margin behind other Republicans) and Donald Trump (who decisively lost a national vote twice and ran behind most Republicans nationally).
Historical benchmarks & geography
Generally, governors are the main contenders for becoming new presidents. A major candidate who most recently served as governor wins roughly 42% of the time, and this describes most of the Republican field. Former vice presidents like Mike Pence have a clear winning record.
Senators like Tim Scott are frequently nominated but have only won about 25% of the time a major party has chosen to nominate them. Former presidents like Donald Trump have also tended to lose, with the notable exception of Grover Cleveland. Miscellaneous candidates like Vivek, lacking the usual qualifications for the presidency, have only been nominated by major parties on seven occasions, winning once.5
One last factor is that presidential candidates generally overperform in their home state. This means that larger states and swing states are more valuable. Of the group of nine candidates discussed in this article, the most valuable home state from an electoral perspective is clearly Florida, which is very large and not far from being a swing state.
Ron DeSantis is not only the leading rival to Trump; by the numbers, he was likely the most electable Republican candidate on the debate stage. His popularity within Florida is worth underlining twice in terms of electoral calculus: It arguably takes Florida off the table of likely battlegound states if DeSantis is the nominee, and if the eventual nominee is quietly opposed by DeSantis, Florida could become a dangerous battleground state in the Electoral College.
Overall scoring
Mike Pence and Chris Christie are both in contention for the middle ranks on this list; Pence does better in current polling, while Christie has a more impressive electoral track record. Both show significant signs of weakness in favorability polling.
The exact placement of Doug Burgum and Asa Hutchinson on this list is a little bit uncertain; they have not been included in many head-to-head polls, and they have low name recognition.
If credited with a home state advantage in Florida, or if head-to-head polling is strongly weighted, Donald Trump may rank ahead of Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Tim Scott in terms of electability.
Previously, I have used the median. It’s easier to explain and show subtracting off the minimum, though, and the results are very similar.
Weighted average based on sample size and pollster quality.
Vivek brands himself with his first name based on it being shorter and more memorable, and I will follow suit.
Christie was “only” 14 points ahead of state legislators as a group due to substantial coattails.
This was Donald Trump in 2016, and it was a very narrow win with a minority of the popular vote.