Ron Paul’s record fund-raising on Monday got me thinking about what the media polls say about his chances of getting the GOP nomination. Clearly, Ron Paul supporters are more motivated than any of the other candidates’ – this is a direct consequence of a successful grassroots campaign since it relies on volunteers who choose to actively participate. Historically, primaries are a non-starter for political action: voter turnout rates are typically around 10% of registered voters for the relevant party. So can the combination of a successful grassroots campaign and general ambivalence at the polls make for a successful nomination run? I crunched the numbers and I was surprised to learn that the answer is: Yes.
A caveat
Before I tell you how I arrived at that conclusion, I want to address one of the many potential complications in my analysis. Paul supporters are enthusiastic, but a subset of them, including regular readers of this website, are philosophically opposed to taking part in the political process in this country; i.e., they don’t vote, not because they don’t care, but because they choose not to. There are different motivations for this position, which are not the subject of this analysis and have been written about at length. I am uncertain about what fraction of registered vs. unregistered voters the non-voting block makes up (based on voter turnout for Presidential elections, it must be less than 50% of all registered voters) and, furthermore, I am uncertain about what fraction of the donors on Monday are opposed to voting.
What is relevant to this article is that Paul’s candidacy is not about Ron Paul the person, but about the message of freedom, liberty, and peace. Because Ron Paul is having a somewhat successful run for President, this message is getting heard more than it ever has before. (Disclaimer: I say “somewhat” because of the third-tier press, debate and media poll attention; “successful” because of the positive attention due to talk shows, internet blogs, text-messaging polls, and fundraising.) How often do you hear someone on Jay Leno bring up Austrian Economics? To my knowledge, this has happened precisely once in the history of the Tonight Show.
To that end, who cares if he wins the election: let’s keep him in the public eye for as long as possible so that this message can get voiced over and over. If he loses the nomination, this message will fade quickly starting early next spring. So there may be a loophole for those who are philosophically opposed to voting, but are believers of freedom, liberty, and peace. If Ron Paul wins the nomination, the message will be heard for at least another 362 days.
Data sources and reasoning
I am using the most recent CNN poll as a starting point, and I argue that Ron Paul (or any other candidate with strong grassroots support) does actually have a very reasonable shot at getting nominated. It seems that this is particularly possible because of 1) the large field of participants (there are 8 now that Brownback dropped out) and 2) no clear front-runner with a large base of support (Giuliani has 28% in the CNN poll). This poll is the most optimistic media poll for Ron Paul (5%) so far, but I don’t think it’s outrageously optimistic. Another recent poll by USA Today is less optimistic for Paul (1%), which does imply that it’s extremely unlikely for Paul to win the nomination.
Media polls employ different methods, but they all report the responses of “likely voters.” I am no expert, but there is a very thorough analysis of polling methodology and it seems that the likely voters in the CNN poll may just be those that voted in the last primary (6.6% of registered Republicans). That was a GOP re-election year, so for this calculation, I’ll use a voter turnout based on the 1996 election: 8.2%. (I couldn’t find an overall turnout for ’98 or ’00.)
So, now that I have the numbers, there are just a couple more assumptions, which, I think, are conservative but are still somewhat arbitrary.
- The CNN poll is a real pulse of registered Republican sentiment. What goes for the 6.6% “likely voters” goes for all registered Republicans.
- Ron Paul’s supporters are more motivated than the other candidates and will vote in proportionately higher numbers. I assume that 50% of Ron Paul supporters will vote in the Republican primary. That is, 8.2% of Giuliani’s supporters will vote. 8.2% of Romney’s supporters will vote. Etc…, but 50% of Paul’s supporters will vote.
And the winner is…
In this calculation, the assumption that Paul supporters turn out in proportionally greater numbers means that the total number of voters increases slightly, from 8.2% to 10.7%, while Paul’s share of the votes increases disproportionately, from 5% to 23%. Also, since the extra 2.1% turnout will exclusively vote for Ron Paul, the other candidate’s take will decrease, i.e. Giuliani goes from 28% in the media poll to 21% in my theoretical primary.
`
media poll
additional Paul supporters
total
`
# voters
82,000
20,900
107,000
(per 1,000,000)
% turnout
8.2%
2.1%
10.7%
`
% turnout for Paul: 50% % turnout for others: 8.2%
`
media poll %
poll votes per million
# supporters per million
est. votes per million
est. final vote %
Giuliani
28%
22,960
280,000
22,960
21%
Thompson
19%
15,580
190,000
15,580
15%
McCain
16%
13,120
160,000
13,120
12%
Romney
11%
9,020
110,000
9,020
8%
Huckabee
10%
8,200
100,000
8,200
8%
Paul
5%
4,100
50,000
25,000
23%
Hunter
4%
3,280
40,000
3,280
3%
Tancredo
3%
2,460
30,000
2,460
2%
No opinion
5%
4,100
50,000
4,100
4%
Total
100%
82,000
1,000,000
107,000
100%
November 9, 2007
