Who will be the Republican Nominee for president?

[jimmy olsen]

I think only the first four are plausible nominees at this point, but I listed the top ten candidates in order of their poll standings according to the RCP average.

Who do you think it will be?

[celedhring]

Call me crazy, but I think it will end up being Bush afterall, or some other establishment-ish candidate (Rubio, maybe). All the crazies seem to fly and burn in increasingly quicker cycles, so I believe they won't last in a long primary.

[Liep]

Trump, Carson, Cruz are among the four people you consider the only viable winners? Bleak.

[jimmy olsen]

Call me crazy, but I think it will end up being Bush afterall, or some other establishment-ish candidate (Rubio, maybe). All the crazies seem to fly and burn in increasingly quicker cycles, so I believe they won't last in a long primary.

Trump has been leading or tied for the lead since July, way longer than Cain, Gingrich or Santorum were in the lead in 2012.

Assuming you and the pundits are right and Trump and Carson flame out, it will come down to Cruz and Rubio for sure.

[Grey Fox]

Bush, the GOP establishment can't afford anyone else.

[DGuller]

Trump has been leading or tied for the lead since July, way longer than Cain, Gingrich or Santorum were in the lead in 2012.

That's true, the length of his lead is more at Giuliani levels.

[Eddie Teach]

I think it will be Rubio.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The predictions markets favor Rubio. I do, too. I thought it'd end up being Jeb for awhile but he's proven to be a spectacularly bad campaigner, speaker, and debater at the Presidential level. I liked Bush on a lot of levels before, but I guess he's just not a very good you know, politician, and it's going to be super hard for him now.

538 had a good article explaining how the GOP primaries are structured to heavily favor the blue states. Not only are the blue states weighted earlier in the primaries (which is usually the only time that matters), but they have sort of a "rotten boroughs" system in place because delegates aren't apportioned based on the number of GOP voters but on the congressional seats, so urban congressional districts in NYC send the same number of delegates as a district in rural Texas, despite some of those urban districts may have had 10% of the vote in their last election go to the GOP token candidate.

This makes it very hard for a far-right conservative, and historically a candidate who loses a lot of early primaries tends to lose momentum and that's the end of their candidacy. There's also some arguments being made that Trump and Carson are attracting a lot of attention (and polling numbers) from low-information right-leaning types who may not actually be regular voters and may not show up on election day.

[jimmy olsen]

Isn't Super Tuesday basically an SEC primary? Whoever wins that will have a big advantage. A more moderate candidate could win a drawn out campaign, but it would be difficult.  The right wing candidate would have a lot of momentum.

[jimmy olsen]

Trump, Carson, Cruz are among the four people you consider the only viable winners? Bleak.

I don't think Carson is that likely. Trump, Cruz or Rubio are much more likely in my view.

[Malthus]

I'm practicing writing "President Trump". 

[Legbiter]

Trump for President and Lulz.

[Eddie Teach]

Isn't Super Tuesday basically an SEC primary?

12 states, 5 of them SEC, and that's counting Texas which is really more Big 12 territory.

[DGuller]

The only way Bush will be the nominee is if Rubio is forced out of the race.  I just don't see how Bush can get back in it on merits.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Isn't Super Tuesday basically an SEC primary? Whoever wins that will have a big advantage. A more moderate candidate could win a drawn out campaign, but it would be difficult.  The right wing candidate would have a lot of momentum.

Well the first four primaries are Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. Only South Carolina is super receptive to far-right rhetoric. Iowa is a little crazy for both parties, Iowa is a more liberal state but tends to have crazies because the caucus system attracts people who aren't representative of the norm. But New Hampshire and Nevada both have substantially more liberal electorates in the primary than the typical deep red state.

Super Tuesday includes 12 elections, four of them from states that would be considered either blue or purple: Massachusetts, Minnesota, Vermont and Virginia, and only 5 of the 12 are in "SEC Country."

Looking at 2012, Romney slightly lost Iowa to Santorum (this wasn't known til a few weeks later as it was so close), but under the delegate apportionment rules he got 6 delegates, Santorum got zero, and Ron Paul got 22. The Iowa caucuses are weird that way. Romney decisively won the New Hampshire primary, lost South Carolina, won Florida (a primary not campaigned in since Florida had gone rogue and held its primary earlier than it was allowed to, so it had its delegate count cut in half and no one campaigned there), Romney decisively won Nevada (50% of the vote), demonstrating its moderate tendencies. An establishment candidate will have big advantages in the 4 outright blue/purple states on Super Tuesday. Additionally, mind the congressional delegate allocations: in all those conservative states that hold primaries on ST several have big cities with liberal voters: Georgia, Tennessee, Texas--this means there will be a lot of congressional delegates apportioned to establishment candidates in those states even if some far right candidate wins the at large vote. Plus, Texas and Georgia have both been getting more liberal. Santorum did horrible in Georgia in 2012 (Gingrich won it, who is significantly more moderate than say, Carson, Cruz, or Trump), Romney won Virginia with 60% of the vote, Texas is going to be an unknown. Texas has historically been irrelevant in the primaries because of its nominating convention approach and its late date in the calendar (almost all its delegates went to Romney in 2012 because by the point it selected delegates he had the nomination sewn up.) This year Texas has moved its primary to Super Tuesday, and now it's doing a "two-step" process, where a portion of delegates will be won based on the Super Tuesday primary, but a portion will be won at the later nominating convention. This means if the primaries remain competitive late candidates will have to campaign twice in Texas.

I think the schedule is not a great one if you're a far right outsider, who will need early momentum to stay in.