GOP Power Rankings or ‘When the Polls Don’t Go Your Way, Make $HIT Up’

Have you seen the news media touting the GOP Power Rankings? What the hell is that, I thought?

Well, it seems that when the polls don’t go your way and an outsider candidate named Trump is leading in all the polls, what is the Establishment GOP to do? Well, you make shit up. And the GOP Power Rankings are a prime example. So despite the fact that only one poll – a CNN poll – taken just after the CNN Debate which was designed to knock Donald Trump down a few pegs shows a huge drop for Trump and a huge gain for Fiorina, these Power Rankings show Fiorina as the #1 Candidate.

And despite the fact that 2 other post CNN debate polls – Zogby and NBC – showed Trump rising after the debates, Fiorina comes out on top. And on a side note here, I see that Real Clear Politics has declined to add these 2 polls into the average polling mix. Is this an oversight? Who knows. But it fits in with the impression the GOP, DNC and Mainstream Media is pushing. Trump is finally in decline.

Only he’s not.

So what are these “Power Rankings” and how do they decide who is on top?

About Dot Com says “These rankings are not based exclusively – or even heavily – on polling data, but instead on a combination of factors including debate performances, favorability ratings, evidence of momentum, and general campaign activity.”

In other words, these rankings rely more on “feelings” than actual tangible, measurable facts and statistics.

So are these “feelings” on power rankings any good? Are they believable?

Well, the latest power rankings at USCONSERVATIVES.ABOUT.COM shows the race like this:

1. Marco Rubio (Last Week #1)
2. Carly Fiorina (Last Week #3)
3. Jeb Bush (Last Week #2)
4. Ben Carson (Last Week #5)
5. Donald Trump (Last Week #10)

It should be noted that Donald Trump was ranked #10 the previous week, despite his massive lead in the polls. And only in the land of the RINO’s are Rubio and Bush in the top 3. These two guys are polling at around 7% each, yet the Power Rankings show them on top.

But others do their own Power Rankings. So just how do they match up to one another? Are they close?

USA Today ranks them like this for the latest weekly rankings:

1. Carly Fiorina
2. Donald Trump
3. Marco Rubio
4. Ben Carson
5. Jeb Bush

I am not sure that Jeb Bush deserves to be in these rankings in the top 5, and Fiorina is #1 despite never besting Trump in any poll.

All in all, a pretty worthless measure of “Power” in my opinion. This is nothing more than a not so transparent attempt to drive the narrative that the polls are telling in a different direction. I suppose that if you are looking for any RINO in a storm, the power rankings will be something you can grab on to to pretend that an establishment politician is high on anyone’s list this election cycle.

Me, I’ll stick to polls. I prefer tangible measurements of actual voters to “feelings” on how the race should be according to some media types with heavy input from the establishment RINO Gop no doubt.