Analysis: Who's Really Leading the Presidential Race?

By Napp Nazworth, Christian Post Reporter Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Here are the total number of contributors to each candidate's campaign, in order of best to worst, along with the percentage of their campaign funds that came from small individual contributions.

Republicans

Ted Cruz	8085 Get Our Latest News for FREE Subscribe to get daily/weekly email with the top stories (plus special offers!) from The Christian Post. Be the first to know. Subscribe	40%
Marco Rubio	7398	28
Ben Carson	6353	68
Jeb Bush	4607	3
Rand Paul	4314	47
Lindsey Graham	1176	4
Mike Huckabee	1003	29
Carly Fiorina	918	43
Rick Perry	526	8
Rick Santorum	313	23
Bobby Jindal	230	10
George Pataki	121	7
Donald Trump	54	2
Scott Walker	N/A	N/A
Chris Christie	N/A	N/A
John Kasich	N/A	N/A
Jim Gilmore	N/A	N/A

Democrats

Conclusions

Looking at the race through this lens, the conventional wisdom is correct on the Democratic side and wrong on the Republican side.

Clinton is the clear front-runner with Sanders a distant second. She leads, by far, in each measure. The Chafee, O'Malley and Webb campaigns barely register a pulse. If Joe Biden were to enter the race, his favorability score would be 60, which is close to Clinton's 63. Depending on his fundraising prowess, he could share the top tier with Clinton if he decides to run.

Among Republicans, Bush and Trump are not the leaders. The only candidates in the top five for each measure are Cruz and Rubio. They have the best chances of winning the nomination. When the data becomes available on Scott Walker's contributors, he could join that club as well, placing those two or three in the top tier.

After that, there is a large second tier of Bush, Carson, Fiorina, Huckabee, Jindal, Paul, Perry and (maybe) Walker.

That leaves, in the third tier, Christie, Gilmore, Graham, Kasich, Pataki and Santorum.

Donald Trump, being a special case, belongs to a tier of his own — the wild card tier. Some of these measures are not helpful with regard to Trump because he is rich and plans to mostly self-finance his campaign. While his fundraising totals are currently small, they could go much higher if he puts more of his own wealth into the campaign coffers. This also makes measuring the size of his base supporters more difficult. Still, his favorability score is low (-1) placing him 13 out of the 17 candidates.

The candidates with the most room to improve are those with high "no opinion" scores. They are Gilmore (77 percent), Fiorina (58 percent), Kasich (58 percent) and Pataki (57 percent).

The candidates with low "no opinion" scores will have the hardest time improving their share of the electorate. They are Trump (13 percent), Bush (18 percent), Christie (25 percent), Huckabee (26 percent) and Paul (29 percent).

Two other numbers of special note are Bush's overall fundraising and Clinton's number of donors, both of which are way ahead of all the other candidates of either party. Both of those advantages will be particularly helpful to those candidates.

There is still time for candidates in the second and third tiers to rise to the top. Carson, in particular, looks strong in two of the three measures. The poll was taken last month, before the first Republican presidential debate, and the Democrats have not even had a debate yet. Plus, some of the fundraising data is not currently available. A clearer picture will emerge by October.

The most successful candidates will continue to do well in their fundraising and see increases in their favorability ratings.