Declaring Candidacy and Polls

A couple of weeks ago Ted Cruz announced his White House run and almost immediately, his polling numbers went up. A few days ago Rand Paul became the second major Republican candidate to declare his candidacy. What will his upcoming polling numbers look like?

First let's take a look at Ted Cruz's most recent numbers.

ABC/Washington Post (3/26-3/29): 12%
Public Policy Polling (3/26-3/31): 16%
Fox News (3/29-3/31): 10%
Monmouth University (3/30-4/2/15): 11%

Note that Cruz announced his candidacy on March 23, so none of the polls were already in the field beforehand.

Here are the second most recent polls for each of these polling firms (Monmouth has not done any before):

ABC/Washington Post (12/11-12/14): 8%
Public Policy Polling (2/20-2/22): 5%
Fox News (1/25-1/27): 4%

Since most polling firms have different polling methodologies, we will compare Cruz's polling numbers by firm.

ABC/Washington Post: +4pp
Public Policy Polling: +11pp
Fox News: +6pp

Note that pp means percentage points (difference between percentages).

If we take a raw average of the percentage points, we get +7pp.

Now let's take a look at Rand Paul's numbers.

ABC/Washington Post (3/26-3/29): 8%
Public Policy Polling (3/26-3/31): 10%
Fox News (3/29-3/31): 9%

If we translate Cruz's percentage point increase to Rand Paul for a future poll, Paul would score between 15% to 17% (raw average 16%), making him a front-runner for that poll.

How would Paul's polling average change? First, let's go back to Cruz.

January: 5.3%
February: 5%
March: 8.6%
April: 9.3%

The ABC/Washington Post, PPP, and Fox News polls took place in March and April's average includes the Monmouth poll as well as the former three polls (and six other older polls). Since Cruz declared candidacy in the third week of March, both March and April include high polling percentages. So if we compare his averages in January and February, and the March and April figures, we see an increase of 3.3pp to 4.3pp.

Paul's latest polling average is 8.3%. If we translate Cruz's percentage point increase to Paul, the Kentucky senator's average is bumped up to 11.6% to 12.6%. This would place him above Cruz (9.3%) and approaching Walker and Bush (15% and 15.7% respectively). The margin may become even smaller if the front-runners' numbers go down as a result of Paul's announcement. This is unlikely in the case of Walker and Bush, since they are more establishment candidates than the grassroots Paul, but Paul might attract some libertarian-leaning voters on Cruz's side.

This is all speculation, of course, and we can only know for sure when the next poll is released.