To be clear, none of this is to say that the GOP primary voters were wrong. But at the very least, even had Ryan somehow performed poorly among all three groups in this analysis, he still would have beat Cruz and Trump here.) (One caveat here is that Ryan hasn't sustained the negative attacks that this year's GOP contenders have - which could bring down his poll numbers. He's followed closely by John Kasich, at 1.75 points, who won only his home state. Meanwhile, Ryan, who didn't even run, does by far the best, scoring a total of 3 points. Trump and, to a lesser extent, Cruz failed to meet the criteria Ayres (and, in many cases, the GOP) thought a successful general-election candidate would need in 2016. It's a rough calculation, but there are a few important takeaways here:ġ) The candidates who scored the worst also did best in the primaries. (For an explanation of how we did this, scroll down to the "Methodology" section.) NPR scored the final three (Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Trump), plus a couple of this cycle's former strong contenders (Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio), as well as two dark horses whose names popped up during the nominating fight (Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney). Can the candidate unite the various factions of the Republican coalition?.Can the candidate win critical swing states, especially those where Republicans hold major statewide office?.Does the candidate appeal to young people?.Does the candidate appeal to blue-collar white voters?.Does the candidate appeal to Hispanics and other minority voters?.Does the candidate offer a specific and persuasive agenda to appeal to the economic anxieties of the middle class?.Does the candidate hold, or has he or she recently held, major political office?.Is the candidate positive, hopeful and optimistic?.Here's what he thought a successful presidential candidate would need in 2016, based on what he saw as the party's weaknesses after 2012 and the nation's changing demographics: Fortunately, Ayres created the easiest way to count this up - an eight-point checklist. So we decided to see how far off the voters were from the GOP insiders. But while Beltway insiders crafted their recommendations, more than 10 million primary voters doused those recommendations in lighter fluid, threw a match and walked away in slow motion, with Carmina Burana playing in the background. In fact, he underperforms among all of those groups. The candidate the GOP is nominating doesn't meet those criteria. (It's one reason Ayres eventually backed Marco Rubio - for his potential for broader appeal.) Perhaps unsurprisingly, his conclusions in several ways mirrored what the GOP laid out in its 2013 "autopsy": The party needed to change with a changing America, reaching out in particular to minorities, young people and women. In particular, Ayres' data-heavy book focused on the nation's demographics, insisting that the party had to win over nonwhites, and particularly Hispanics. Last year, GOP pollster Whit Ayres famously laid out what the party would need to win the White House in 2016 and Beyond. Or maybe it was political scientists' fault.īut there's one big reason why so many smart people overlooked him: He's the opposite of what many of the loudest voices in the Republican Party said they wanted. And there's all sorts of finger-pointing as to why: Journalists blew it. Which of these guys did the GOP establishment think it wanted? Hint: Not the guy in the middle.Īlmost no one saw Donald Trump coming a year ago, it seems.
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