June 10 Poll Report

            Tulsi Gabbard did poorly in yesterday’s poll, ceding a little bit of support to Julian Castro and a little bit to Jay Inslee:

            Gabbard thus sinks to 165 (1.65%), a new low for her.  As has been the case for several days in a row, the removal of the old poll had more impact on the standings than the addition of the new one.  The stale poll removed from the standings was the poll of April 20—Gillibrand, 20; Booker, 44; Castro, 15; Flake 21.   Castro thus was in both polls of interest—the new one added and the old one taken away.   The net result was +8 for him, but he is still within the envelope of where he has been in recent weeks. 

            Four candidates moved by five points or more since yesterday; well, three candidates and one guy that I have been including in the polls since I thought he might become a candidate.   Kirsten Gillibrand, discussed yesterday since she is moving up solidly in the poll, gains another 17 points due to the removal of the April 20 poll.  Castro adds 8, Gabbard loses 5, and Flake loses 19 due to the removal of the April 20 poll.  These are today’s standings:

            The total movement of all candidates was only 79 points, which is very low, the lowest total of the last eight days.   Fewer points move when we poll the tail-end candidates as opposed to the stronger candidates.  

            It is a clear pattern that my voters are losing interest in the people who are not actively campaigning—Abrams, Flake, and Schultz.   Due to secondary effects of other candidates moving, Amy Klobuchar has passed Bernie Sanders in my poll, and Wayne Messam has established a new low for any candidate, 25 (or one-quarter of one percent.)  Don’t want to make anything out of the Klobuchar/Sanders thing, which may turn around tomorrow, and Messam was at 25.51 yesterday, 25.48 today—really nothing, but it rounds different.  

            In the next round of polling I am going to place the candidates in trial heats based on a combination of their standing in the poll, and a random number.  In this round I was placing people in trial heats strictly by their poll number, but I can’t do that every week or I would be polling the same groups over and over.   By using a random number, I can put strong candidates against strong candidates and weaker ones against generally weaker, but stirring the pot a little bit.  Also, in the last two rounds, since I have 29 "candidates" and 29 is not a number that divides evenly by four, I was running three groups of three, which I hate to do because I get only six positioning points out of a three-person race, whereas I get 12 positioning points out of four-person race, and I need as much information as possible to get a clear picture of where everybody stands.   I realized that was stupid; what I should do instead is just run through seven trial heats of four candidates each, and then whoever is not in that round is in the first heat of the next round.   I don’t know if that makes sense. . . .anyway, thanks for voting, and thanks for reading.   

I’m still trying to figure out how to do this.   I have decided not to remove Flake or Messam from the poll until at least after the late-June Democratic debate(s), which will be sort of a re-set button for some of the campaigns. 

In 2016, when there were a large number of Republican candidates, I thought that what Fox News ought to do in, let’s say, the 7:00 hour, was to arrange a long series of one-on-one debates among candidates, Jeb Bush against Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz against Mike Huckabee, etc., and each day have the public vote on who won the debate, and keep a running tally of wins and losses.   Let’s say you did that every day, half hour a day for three months, five days a week, you’d have 60-some mini-debates; each candidate would get about seven chances to make their case against another candidate, one on one.   I thought it would be great television and would get tremendous ratings, and also that it would be a public service, giving candidates a real chance to say what they had to say.   So I’ll suggest that now for MSNBC or CNN or whoever.   I think the "Town Halls" are not that interesting because they give the candidates too much space to schmooze and emote and bloviate, rather than discussing the issues.  I watch them, but I rarely come out of the experience with a different perspective on the candidate than I went in with.