TPM Reader PB makes some good points here.
I took a look at the 2012 race and was somewhat surprised. We are much further ahead than I thought.
Back in 2012, the last week in October was peak Cain. Bachman had already had her surge, so had Perry and there were only the Gingrich and Santorum surges to come.
The Gingrich surge did begin in early November and pretty much followed the Cain collapse.
Carson is obviously a nut. But that isn’t what made Cain implode. It was the verbal gaffes and the alleged harassment.
The other point to consider is that the number of candidates makes it a lot harder for those in the middle of the pack to get their message out but there is no evidence that the bottomfeeders are sapping support. The bottom six consistently share 4% in poll after poll.
Take the rest and there is a fairly obvious match for most of the candidates.
Santorum, Pataki, Jindal, Graham, Kasich, Christie, Rand Paul = Nothing
Perry, Walker = Perry
Fiorina = Bachman
Huckabee = Santorum (maybe)
Bush = A slightly stronger Huntsman
Cruz = Paul1
Rubio = Gingrich (maybe)
Carson = Cain
Trump = RomneyIf Bush was to drop out now, the 2016 race looks pretty much identical to 2012. Huck and Rubio look likely to be the ones to surge later on but only if Carson collapses to create a block of voters looking for a home and only if they don’t consider Trump more likely to share their values.
