Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Why Marco Rubio Has the Inside Track

Marco Ru­bio, for the first time, has vaul­ted to first place in Hot­line‘s Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­en­tial power rank­ings—but it’s a spot he holds only by a hair.
In our as­sess­ment of the can­did­ates’ like­li­hood of win­ning the GOP nom­in­a­tion, Ru­bio leads a tightly bunched trio of at the front of the pack—with him, Ted Cruz, and Don­ald Trump hav­ing a cred­ible shot at be­com­ing the party’s pick.
Ru­bio has emerged as the fa­vor­ite of the party es­tab­lish­ment, and has been gain­ing ground with col­lege-edu­cated voters both na­tion­ally and in the early states. Giv­en the es­tab­lish­ment’s strong track re­cord in nom­in­at­ing its can­did­ates, we’re giv­ing Ru­bio a very nar­row edge over two com­pet­it­ors, both of whom led him in Monday’s NBC News/Wall Street Journ­al na­tion­al poll and Sat­urday’s Iowa poll from the Des Moines Re­gister/Bloomberg Polit­ics. Trump has con­sol­id­ated sup­port from the blue-col­lar work­ing-class wing of the party, and is gain­ing ground in the latest na­tion­al polls, re­flect­ing a pub­lic drawn to his tough talk at a time of wide­spread in­sec­ur­ity. And Cruz now looks like the front-run­ner in Iowa, lead­ing the gold-stand­ard Des Moines Re­gister poll with a screen that has ac­cur­ately an­ti­cip­ated who will be at­tend­ing the caucuses.
This is the Re­pub­lic­an top tier. In fact, there is only one oth­er can­did­ate—New Jer­sey Gov. Chris Christie—that we see with an out­side op­por­tun­ity to win the nom­in­a­tion, giv­en the steady in­roads that he’s mak­ing in New Hamp­shire. Every­one else has sig­ni­fic­ant obstacles they need to over­come. Jeb Bush is los­ing mo­mentum des­pite spend­ing more money than any­one else, Ben Car­son’s for­eign policy in­ex­per­i­ence is in­creas­ingly prob­lem­at­ic, and John Kasich is do­ing little to woo con­ser­vat­ives even as his fa­vor­able rat­ings de­cline. Carly Fior­ina’s sup­port has col­lapsed.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/s/126034/2016-power-rankings-why-marco-rubio-has-inside-track?mref=home_top_main

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