A New List

Back on November 24, Jonathan Bernstein said the next Republican nominee for president would probably come from a list of twelve potential candidates. Now he's back with an updated list of 11 potentials. With Paul Ryan and Rob Portman having officially dropped out and Mittens having dropped in, the list now looks like this: (Note this is not in order of probability.) 

Jeb Bush
Mitt Romney
Chris Christie
Rick Perry
John Kasich
Mike Pence
Marco Rubio
Bobby Jindal
Scott Walker
Mike Huckabee
Rick Santorum

Within the group he breaks it down like this:

Who are the strongest contenders? If I had to guess right now, I’d say Bush, Rubio and Walker are sort of a top-tier; Kasich and Pence are both realistic longshots who might belong in the top group but who seem to be moving very slowly (perhaps because they aren’t getting as much encouragement as they would like?) The rest all seem somewhat less likely. But that’s a mix of speculation and my (subjective) interpretation of early (and perhaps very incomplete) reporting; there’s very little hard evidence yet about who is running well and who isn’t. It's called the  “invisible primary” for a reason: A lot of what’s happened isn’t being publicized.

He continues to believe that Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are not viable candidates, which is slightly out-of-step with other pundits. This is all just informed tea-leaf reading right now, as no one on the Republican side has formally declared himself to be a candidate but those announcements should be coming soon. 

Read the entire post here. 

Days until Election Day: 654