On Monday, as Jeb Bush’s struggling presidential campaign tried to “reboot,” kicking off a daylong “Jeb Can Fix It” tour through the former governor’s home state of Florida, Bush’s communications director tried to start managing expectations.
“FYI political press corps,” Tim Miller tweeted. “Jeb’s going to have a few weeks of bad polls. Comebacks take time, we recognize and are prepared for that.”
The message wasn’t subtle: we’re going to see Bush struggling for a while, and we should pay the data no mind. It’s about what we might expect from Team Jeb under the circumstances, but it’s just not that easy to overlook the latest poll results.
Take the new Quinnipiac poll, for example:
1. Donald Trump: 24% (down one point from September)
2. Ben Carson: 23% (up six points)
3. Marco Rubio: 14% (up five points)
4. Ted Cruz: 13% (up six points)
5. Jeb Bush: 4% (down six points)
The remaining candidates, at least in this poll, have support at 3% or lower. That includes Carly Fiorina, who has seen her support collapse after garnering 12% in Quinnipiac’s poll in September.
In New Hampshire, meanwhile, a new WBUR poll released these results this morning:
1. Donald Trump: 18% (down four points from September)
2. Ben Carson: 16% (down two points)
3. Marco Rubio: 11% (up nine points)
4. John Kasich: 10% (up one point)
5. Chris Christie: 8% (up six points)
6. Jeb Bush: 7% (down two points)
7. Ted Cruz: 6% (up one point)
7. Carly Fiorina: 6% (down five points)
The remaining candidates were at 3% or lower.
The fact that Bush is now trailing Christie, at least in this poll, is bound to raise some eyebrows in the Granite State.
Both of these sets of polls are largely in line with the results we discussed yesterday.
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Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."