County chairs coming off the fence... for Trump

My latest survey results

The results of the October wave of my survey of county Republican Party chairs are now up at Politico. There are a number of different ways of asking chairs just whom they are supporting, but they all point in the same direction; these local party leaders are closing ranks behind Trump.

As the figure above shows, the percent of chairs saying they are “uncommitted” to a candidates has been holding pretty steady around 50% all year, until October, when it plunged to below 40%. Pretty much all that drop moved toward Trump. As I note in the piece, even a few chairs who claim not to like Trump very much feel they need to back him right now.

Here’s a bonus figure you won’t see at the Politico piece. It shows the percent of chairs considering a candidate along the horizontal axis and the percent opposed to the candidate on the vertical axis. Each candidate appears twice, with hollow dots representing their numbers in the August survey and solid dots the October survey. The arrows show just how much movement has occurred. Generally speaking, the best candidates can do is to move downward and rightward – lowering the number of chairs who oppose them while improving the number who are considering them.

By far the candidate with the best movement over this time period was Trump. He moved downward and to the right by a lot — more chairs are considering him, fewer are rejecting him. By contrast, nearly every other candidate moved in the other direction. This is what consolidation looks like.