Senator Ted Cruz was first out the gate on the GOP side to declare himself running for President in 2016, when he formally announced at the ironically-named Liberty University yesterday. The quants over at FiveThirtyEight immediately told us why he will lose, by synthesizing data from three different sources which attempt to measure where a given public figure falls on the conservative spectrum:
Cruz is more conservative than every recent nominee, every other candidate who mounted a serious bid in 2012 and every plausible candidate running or potentially running in 2016. Let’s look at three ideological measures: DW-Nominate common-space scores (which are based on a candidate’s voting record in Congress), fundraising ratings (based on who donates to a candidate), and OnTheIssues.org scores (based on public statements made by the candidate). As my colleague Nate Silver has previously noted, these measures aren’t perfect, but together, they give you a fairly good idea of where a candidate stands.
Go check out the full article, it stands as an excellent example of how to carefully measure and confirm (or disconfirm) commonly-held political intuitions like “Cruz is the most conservative political candidate I’ve seen in ages” or “Paul is a pants-on-fire hypocrite” using historical data.
It appears likely that Cruz will drag the entire GOP primary process well to the right, thereby widening the chasm between that party’s rhetoric and what moderate swing voters are hoping to hear. I can almost hear the champagne corks popping over at the DNC.
