Who's on the Bubble for CNBC GOP Debate

The short answer is that likely all 10 left from the last main debate will be together again and there will only be 2 more polls that determine this. The longer explanation follows.

Bob Jordan (@bobjordanapp) wrote on Sep 29:

Chuck Todd, NBC’s political director and host of Meet the Press, has expressed a willingness to shorten the stage after 11 candidates plodded through a three-hour marathon debate on CNN two weeks ago.

Todd has a lead role in establishing debate rules for CNBC, an NBC affiliate.

“Let’s just say the goal is to create a threshold that candidates have to meet to qualify for the stage rather than committing to putting 10 candidates on the stage. And I don’t think we should commit to more than 10-candidate debates,’’ Todd said in an interview on ESPN radio. “You have to be viable. So now we’re in debate three it’s time to show viability and only the viable ones survive.”

A day later, the CNBC published its debate qualifier rules: 

To qualify for the primetime debate, candidates must average 2.5 percent on the national polls from NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN, and Bloomberg — released between September 17 and October 21.

Because of basic math six candidates (Trump, Carson, Fiorina, Bush, Rubio and Cruz) already have a high enough average that they could get 0’s on the next 5 polls and still qualify.

But that brings up another question. How many more polls will there be? 

By looking up the frequency of national polls by these organizations, it is virtually certain that neither Bloomberg, ABC nor CBS will do another national poll before October 21. ABC finished their 2nd poll this year on Sep 10 (their previous poll ended Jul 19), CBS finished their 2nd poll on Sep 13 (their previous poll ended Aug 2) and Bloomberg finished their 2nd poll on Sep 21 (their previous poll ended Aug 2). NBC, as parent company of CNBC “might” be tempted to rush out a poll just 3 weeks after their last poll on Sep 24 (their polls always end on Thursdays and they average a poll once every 7 weeks), but doing one so quickly might seem to be less objective-minded, and raise credibility issues to make such a radical departure from their previous pattern of polling every 6 to 8 weeks.

That leaves just CNN and Fox, who have been averaging polls every 5 and 4 weeks respectively. Fox’s last poll ended Sep 22, and is the chief sponsor of the GOP, so it seems very likely they will release another poll on or just before the deadline. 

CNN likes to end polls on Sundays and Oct 18 is the last Sunday before the deadline. It means slightly rushing a new poll since their last one ending on Sep 19, but it seems likely they will do one.

So most likely situation is that there are only TWO MORE polls.

What does this mean for the remaining candidates? Of the candidates at the last "kiddie table" debate, the highest polling averages (using the CNBC criteria), at just 0.5%, belong to Santorum and Jindal. They would have to average a whopping 6.5% to get to the debate. Neither has ever polled that high on ANY national poll this year.

This leaves 4 candidates currently averaging between 2.75 and 4%. Two of them (Kasich and Christie) could get goose eggs on the next two polls and still qualify for the debate. Huckabee just needs to get a 1% on just one of the next two polls to qualify.

Seem like a lock. But is it?

While it is a highly likely Huckabee will bottom out before reaching 0% on Oct 21, but since both the CNN and Fox polls are likely to come out just before the Oct 21 deadline and they only report 0 or 1% (not 0.5%), it isn’t unreasonable to see zeros. 

But there is one sign of hope for Huckabee. CNN’s last poll had Huckabee at 6% (vs. 3.2% on their trendline at the time). Perhaps something about their polling method gives Huckabee a bump. So maybe that means CNN will be down to 3% near the Oct 21 deadline meaning Huckabee would make the cut even if NBC also came out and gave him a 0.

That leaves one candidate, Rand Paul. 

If there are one or two polls before the deadline, as long as the new results average 2%, he is in. Looking at the forecasted trends above based on all national polls, he should get by with 3%. 

What about house affects? The last time Fox and CNN polled about Rand Paul he got 2 and 4% respectively, about 10% higher than the 2.7% average he was trending on for all polls. So he seems like he will just get in. 

It gets a little more dicey if NBC also does a poll because with three polls he needs to get a total of 7 points so there is not much room to spare on the forecast. 

If something important and negative gets a lot of coverage in the next month (the trial involving his father, sister and campaign strategist comes to mind), that might be enough to drop .5 % in one poll, which rounds to 1% and he just misses the cut.

Does CNN's polling methods save Mike Huckabee? Will Rand Paul avoid negative, poll depressing news? We'll know in a few weeks.

- JW

Hardball Most Competitive since Obama '08 Election

On August 26, 2013 MSNBC made an adjustment to its evening lineup, moving Ed Schultz into Chris Matthews' live showing of Hardball at 5 PM and turning his repeat broadcast at 7 PM into his live showing.

MSNBC President Phil Griffen said:

"This move will concentrate the 'Hardball' audience to one key time period and enhance the flow of our evening programming"

The Huffington Post's media critic Jack Mirkinson said

"The move could also be something of an admission about the continuing struggles of Schultz's 8 PM replacement, Chris Hayes. His wonky show has failed to match the ratings the more blustery Schultz put up in the time slot."

Politico's media critic Dylan Byers assessment was:

"MSNBC's evening lineup will now return to a mishmash of two different kinds of liberals who, though united behind a progressive agenda, do not always see eye to eye on aesthetics."

A common problem with critics and pundits is that they have no training in analyzing data. They will tell you the ratings (number of viewers) were up (or down) vs. yesterday, or last month, or last quarter, or last year and give you no context or explanation as to why that particular comparison is relevant (or not).

The following graph shows that Phil Griffen made a GREAT move when he shifted the lineup. The 7 PM hour is now more competitive than it has been in 5 years (just after Obama was elected and also when Obama beat Clinton in the primary). The 8 PM hour while not doing nearly so well as in Olbermann's heydays is as well now as it has in the last 4+ years not counting the runup to the 2012 election. (ALL MSNBC shows did MUCH better than normal in the month or two before and after the '08 and '12 elections)

Now, if you are an accountant, you will want to know how the ratings change on a show because that will affect your revenue, but media critics/pundits aren't (usually) accountants. They want to tell you who is hot or not.

The world of cable news is mostly driven by what is happening today. Ratings go up or down for a show vs. the prior day because of whatever events are happening that day, whether there is a substitute host, which day of the week it is, etc. In a larger scale, the "events happening that day" are more interesting to mostly politics-driven cable news shows when you are nearing election day in a presidential year, or a major primary, or a major speech and also major news events (e.g government shutdown, a hurricane, a bombing, etc). So to compare the ratings of one show does on a day where something major happened to another day where nothing significant happened is generally pointless.

What is more relevant is how did a show do against its major competition.

That is why the graph above compares how close MSNBC was to Fox (i.e. 120% means MSNBC did better than Fox, 80% means Fox won). Because day to day news events will make the trends hard to follow, I averaged entire weeks. In this case I chose an average of the previous 4 weeks to make the trends evident. (A single major event can cause a ratings spike triple of a typical day, sometimes even 7 times greater). I also excluded special shows (e.g. live coverage of the convention, or live election results, or the president's State of the Union address, etc). I did not try to take into account when the normal host was not broadcasting that day only because I didn't have that data readily available. I am guessing the the vacations hosts take are roughly the same and often at the same time of year so that this is likely to have insignificant impact in a 4 week average.

I also chose to use the ratings in the key Demo (age 25-54) not only because advertisers (revenue) care mostly about this view age range, but because it is pointless for any cable news network to try to compete with the millions of retirees who are dedicated to Fox. The overwhelming majority of Fox viewers are over 65. That has always been true and the addition of Megan Kelly to their prime time lineup has not changed that.

Finally, ratings focused media critics should maybe give Chris Hayes a break as they look at these comparative numbers. Chris Hayes is now doing much better than Lawrence O'Donnell (who hosted at 8 PM between Jan 24, 2011 through Oct 21, 2011) and Ed Schultz (who hosted from Oct 24, 2011 to March 25, 2013) with the exception of the big ratings bump that every MSNBC show got 2 months before and after the 2012 presidential election and even better than Keith Olbermann did in his final year and a half (July 2009 to Jan 2011). While my data doesn't go before Dec 2005, I would bet (excluding the time around the 2004 election) that Chris Hayes current ratings vs. Fox are better than Keith Olbermann's were during his first 3.5 years of Countdown (Mar 2003- Oct 2006) or his prior 2 years at MSNBC ('97 to '98).

So give Chris Hayes some more time. As Fox's viewers continue to die off, there may yet again be a point where MSNBC is regularly competitive with Fox's O'Reilly.

Just win, baby

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/06/presidential-election-2012-romney-politics_n_2036245.html Sadly, I agree with this whole column. It seems to be a byproduct of the information age. I'm not sure how it evolves towards something more healthy and balanced.