Poll Report May 23, 2019

            I’ll begin by saying that this is a perfunctory report.  A thorough explanation of what I am doing can be found in YESTERDAY’S report, Poll Report May 22. 

            The candidates in yesterday’s poll were Stacey Abrams, Jeff Flake, Wayne Messam and Howard Schultz.  The results of the poll were essentially as we would have predicted that they would be based on the previous polls, but with Abrams over-performing and Schultz under-performing a little bit:

            This caused Abrams to move up from 550 to 566, and dropped Schultz from 195 to 188.   These are not highly meaningful movements; Abrams isn’t actually in the race at this point.   Experience would show that, if and when she actually enters the race, she will surge forward, probably up into the 700s, but then will fall back a little when her attention boomlet goes away.   She’s a serious name, though, if she does decide to get in.  Schultz performing poorly for the second consecutive poll is "real", in the sense that people don’t care about him and are losing interest, but my read on the situation is that he is probably working on building his plan at this point, and doesn’t want or need attention right now; his better strategy is to lay low until the crowd of candidates thins out and people start to say they don’t like either candidate or any of the candidates. 

            Speaking of the crowd thinning out, yesterday’s poll happened to include the only two candidates that I am considering dropping from the polling group, Jeff Flake and Wayne Messam.  Messam I am considering dropping because his support level is (a) extremely low and (b) getting lower.  On April 25 I had him at 40, which is a very low number, but he wasn’t in last place at that time.  Every time I poll him I find even less support than before; he is down to 30 now (3/10^th of one percent), the lowest point anyone has reached in this poll.   Marianne Williamson (a) has passed him, and (b) has qualified for the debate stage, so she has a chance to attract some attention.   I am debating whether I should just eliminate Messam from the group.

            Jeff Flake, I don’t really see any sign that he is going to enter the race.  I am certain that Flake wants to be President; he is a nice-looking, well-spoken man and I kind of like him, but he wandered into a bad place politically.   He despises Trump, and in the early days of the Trump Administration he was the "leader" of the Republican opposition to Trump; well, rather than the leader of it, he was pretty much it.  He stepped up to take the lead, but nobody followed.  His favorability numbers in his home state dropped so low that he had to leave the Senate voluntarily or face a likely defeat.  I thought that he would re-group and challenge Trump in the primaries, but I don’t see any sign of it happening, and I may drop him from the polls in a few weeks, unless I see something happening. 

            These are the updated standings: