Dem
51
GOP
49
Yesterday, we had an item about the newest Morning Consult poll, which shows Donald Trump leading Ron DeSantis by 17 points among Republican voters. Yesterday, Yahoo/YouGov responded with a poll of their own that says that it's much, much closer among Republican primary voters. Specifically, in a field of 8 leading candidates, it's Trump 37%, DeSantis 36%, Mike Pence 5%, Nikki Haley 1%, Glenn Youngkin 0%, Chris Christie 3%, Mike Pompeo 1%, Larry Hogan 1%, and Liz Cheney 2%. And in a head-to-head matchup, it's DeSantis 40% and Trump 39%.
Who knows what the explanation is for the wildly varying results we keep seeing. Undoubtedly, various pollsters are using different screens for which voters they do and do not include. They also clearly have different models of the electorate. This far out, it doesn't tell us too much, except that neither of the leading Republicans is dead in the water, as yet.
This does, however, give us an opportunity to launch something we've been bandying about, namely our presidential tracking poll. The readership of this site is disproportionately educated and politically informed, and we would be mad not to take advantage of that. While this is not scientific, per se, that's less important with a tracking poll, since tracking polls are less oriented toward being predictive, and more oriented toward identifying momentum and change over time.
Here's the plan (subject to revision, as we work out the kinks). We will provide a list of 10 possible Republican candidates, and respondents will rank the first, second, and third most likely to become the 2024 presidential nominee. Same thing for the Democratic candidates. There's also a blank field after each group of 10 to suggest someone who should be on each list but isn't. Each month, the two most popular write-ins will supplant the two lowest vote-getters.
Each month, we will also include a wildcard question on some other subject. This month, it's about most popular media outlets, other months it could be something serious like that or something a bit lighter. We'll run results on or near the first of the month each month, depending on how the calendar breaks down.
If you would care to participate, the first ballot is here. As always, we welcome comments/suggestions. (V & Z)