Why No Polls?

There have been no significant surveys of the Republican field taken since the announcement that frontrunners Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump and Establishment darling Mitch Daniels have dropped out of the race.

Despite standard disclaimers that polls taken this far out are completely meaningless, they nonetheless provide grist for the mill. I’m quite surprised, then, that there have been no significant surveys of the Republican field taken since the announcement that frontrunners Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump* and Establishment darling Mitch Daniels have dropped out** of the race. The last survey in the RealClearPolitics aggregate is a PPP survey taken May 5-8 and all the others included were taken in April.

C’mon, pollsters! We want to what the impact of the shake-up has been.

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*Trump is now hinting that he may run after all–perhaps as an independent. But methinks he’s toast.

**Technically, none of them were actually running. But the long feeling out process is very much a part of the campaign.

FILED UNDER: 2012 Election, Public Opinion Polls, , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Part of the reason may be the fact that there have been so many quick changes so quickly that it has been hard for pollsters to set up a poll in time before another piece of news changes the state of play. Given the upcoming three-day weekend, it’s likely we won’t see anything until sometime in early June I’m guessing.

  2. Jeremy says:

    Um, who are you linking to in that footnote link? Lindley French? I looked and didn’t see anything about Donald Trump in there, just a long essay about the “special relationship” between the US and Britain.

    Unless Lindley French is an alias for Donald Trump. I’m not that deep into politics…

  3. James Joyner says:

    @Jeremy: Nah, just a clipboard error. Link fixed now to point to Doug’s article on a possible independent run for Trump.

  4. Keep in mind that “possible independent run for Trump” means “promotional tour for Season 5 of Celebrity Apprentice”

  5. Jay Tea says:

    Why no polls? I thought it was because I finally got my wish…

    J.

  6. mantis says:

    Gallup posted a Republican “Positive Intensity Score” poll yesterday:

    Newly announced presidential candidate Herman Cain, although still not widely known, has the highest Positive Intensity Score among Republicans of any potential GOP candidate still in the race. The positioning of two other candidates who have recently announced presidential bids — Tim Pawlenty and Ron Paul — has not changed. Both have average or below-average appeal among Republicans. Newt Gingrich’s Positive Intensity Score is below average, and is down from the week prior.

    It’s something, anyway.

  7. Southern Hoosier says:
  8. Zogby is an inherently unreliably poll

  9. James Joyner says:

    @Southern Hoosier and @Doug Mataconis: Indeed, RealClearPolitics, which is quite fair but leans right, doesn’t even include Zogby in its aggregate anymore.

  10. Tano says:

    Speaking of polls – on a related matter…

    James – what is it now, a week?since you posted about how Obama’s post-bin Laden surge had evaporated? Seems like the RealClear approval average is still up a net 12 points or so, as is the daily Gallup tracking number.
    Gotta be careful jumping on board with those who extract phony trends from subsamples of the data (or one poll), in order to hype a message they hope is true