Dr. Carson Rising in Iowa

They say you can hear the corn grow in Iowa in late summer. After the Republicans held their first presidential debate in early August, you could hear Dr. Ben Carson’s support grow as he moved into second place in the polls in Iowa.

A new CNN/ORC poll out after the first Republican debate showed that Dr. Carson now trails only Donald Trump by 22% to 14% in Iowa. Dr. Carson has also caught U.S. Senator Marco Rubio to tie for fourth place in national polls of potential Republican voters. Trump still leads national polls with 22.8%, Jeb Bush at 12% and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at 9.4%. Rubio and Dr. Carson are at 6.2%.

Best Line of the Night

Dr. Carson had the best line of the night at the end of the early August debate when he said, “Well, I haven’t said anything about me being the only one to do anything, so let me try that: I am the only one to separate Siamese twins, the only one to operate on babies while they were still in their mothers’ womb, the only one to take out half of a brain although you would think, if you go to Washington, that someone had beat me to it.”

Nate Silver’s online publication, FiveThirtyEight, said Dr. Carson “continues to poll fairly well and is well-liked by voters. Depending on which poll you look at, he was rated as either the most impressive or the second most impressive candidate in the varsity debate.”

Winners and Losers

Silver tracked changes in polls, pre-debate to post-debate. Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO, until being fired by her board, had the biggest jump, rising 6.0%. Rubio and Carson each rose 2.4%. Scott Walker was the big loser, dropping 4.6%.

Healthcare? What Healthcare?

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the debate was the absence of talk about healthcare. They all said they wanted to “Repeal and Replace” Obamacare. But no one offered an alternative.

The only ones to give more than a sound bite about healthcare were Ohio Governor John Kasich, as he explained why he expanded his state’s Medicaid program with Obamacare money, and Donald Trump, who claimed that even though he’d said good things about the single payers systems in Canada and Scotland, he preferred a “private system” for the U.S. “without the artificial lines around every state.”

Polls and the Nate Silver Scorecard

Silver urged people not to get too wound up about polls right now.

“Twelve years ago, in August 2003, Joe Lieberman led in most polls of the Democratic primary. Eight years ago, in August 2007, Rudy Giuliani maintained a clear lead in polls of Republicans, while Hillary Clinton led in polls of the Democratic nomination contest. Four years ago, in August 2011, Mitt Romney began with the lead in polls of Republican voters, but he would be surpassed by the end of the month by Rick Perry, the first of four Republican rivals who would at some point overtake Romney in national polling averages, ” wrote Silver.

Silver says the polls have “some correlation” with election outcomes. It’s better to be near the top than near the bottom. But polls right now are “like projecting a major league pitcher’s numbers from high school stats: Sure, you’d rather draft a random 17-year-old with a 2.14 ERA than another one with a 3.31 ERA if that’s all the information you have to go by. But that data doesn’t reveal very much, and its predictive power tends to be swamped by other indicators (everything from the pitcher’s strikeout-to-walk ratio to his scouting reports).”

Endorsements Matter

The best indicators in the case of presidential primaries, says Silver, are “endorsements and support from party elites tend to be more reliable indicators of eventual success.”

If that’s the case, place your bets on Jeb Bush.

FiveThirtyEight keeps track and weighs endorsements on a numerical scale of Governors (10 points), U.S. Senators (5 points) and U.S. Representatives (1 point.) In that race Bush leads with 31 points, followed by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie with 25 and Huckabee with 15. Dr. Carson stands at 0.