Already feeling overwhelmed by the 2016 presidential race? It's understandable with 16 major Republican candidates running for White House. This doesn't count a slew of lesser-known aspirants, including some former governors who would merit attention in a smaller field.
People ridiculed the 1988 Democratic presidential candidates as the "Seven Dwarves." So far, no one has called this group the Sweet 16. Only 10 at a time are expected to appear together onstage for debates sanctioned by the Republican National Committee. Among them are senators, governors, a successful businesswoman, a retired neurosurgeon and author and a billionaire reality TV star.
Can any of them beat Hillary Clinton? They have reason to hope, for the last time Clinton looked inevitable, she lost. Her odds of making it out of the Democratic primaries are much better this time. So far, she has attracted four challengers and only Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont, has attracted a meaningful following. Neither Joe Biden nor any other Democratic savior has emerged.
The general election is a shakier proposition for Clinton. She fares well in national polls, frequently beating her Republican rivals by double digits in hypothetical match-ups. But swing state polls tell a different story. In late July, Quinnipiac found her losing Colorado, Iowa and Virginia — they are all states Barack Obama carried twice and George W. Bush won at least once — to the leading Republican candidates.
But if the polls more than a year before the election were determinative, Rudy Giuliani and Richard Gephardt would have been major-party presidential nominees, and John McCain might have been president of the United States. At this point, Clinton looks like a competitive but beatable candidate in the general election. But before any of the Republicans can beat Hillary, they must first defeat the rest of the GOP field.
The Republican race is wide open, with barely 10 points separating first and fourth places in the national RealClearPolitics polling average. Fewer than 20 points separate first place from fifteenth place, a spot occupied in July by a candidate with 0 percent of the vote.
Superficially, the 2016 GOP contest looks a lot like past races. You have an establishment candidate in Jeb Bush. The combined finances of his campaign and super PAC mean Bush is awash in money. He has a good team, solid organization and plenty of endorsements. Then there's a group of candidates competing to be the conservative alternative to Jeb.
Yet the race is, in other ways, like no other in recent memory. Bush is the establishment candidate, yes, but he is not the clear front-runner. He's led in only one major poll in Iowa since May 2014, and after trailing Mike Huckabee in an outlier poll in February, he has at different times lost his national lead to Scott Walker, Marco Rubio and, most recently, Donald Trump.
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