New polls!
Quinnipiac has a slew of head-to-head poll results:
Clinton v Trump: Clinton 44, Trump 43 (Clinton +1)
Sanders v Trump: Sanders 48, Trump 42 (Sanders +6)
Clinton v Cruz: Cruz 46, Clinton 43 (Cruz +3)
Sanders v Cruz: Sanders 49, Cruz 39 (Sanders +10)
Clinton v Rubio: Rubio 48, Clinton 41 (Rubio +7)
Sanders v Rubio: Sanders 47, Rubio 41 (Sanders +6)
Clinton v Bush: Bush 44, Clinton 43 (Bush +1)
Sanders v Bush: Sanders 49, Bush 39 (Sanders +10)
Clinton v Kasich: Kasich 47, Clinton 39 (Kasich +8)
Sanders v Kasich: Sanders 45, Kasich 41 (Sanders +4)
Congressional approval is at 9%, while Obama's approval is between 43-49% depending on the poll. Remind me again how everything is Obama's fault?
Couple more SC polls, no real change from the previous trends -- Trump in the low-mid 30's, Cruz in 2nd with 15-20%, Rubio close on his heels with 15-16%, and Bush in 4th place with around 10%. One difference in the FOX News poll released today is that Ben Carson is actually tied for 4th with Bush at 9%, Carson's best showing in a state poll in a while. So there continues to be the Cruz/Rubio dogfight for 2nd/3rd and the Bush/Kasich dogfight for 4th may be heating up into a 3-way battle with Carson.
There's also a
Wall Street Journal poll which shows Cruz overtaking Trump, but given that the numbers are rather dramatically different than several contemporary polls, I'm inclined to treat it as an outlier.
EDIT: FiveThirtyEight has done a great project on speechcraft that I highly encourage everyone to check out. They had two speechwriters (one Republican, one Democrat) write very pandering, red-meat sort of speeches that a candidate might deliver to rally their base, and then they analyze and explain the rhetorical flourishes and why particular phrases and topics are almost
de rigeur for political speeches. It's really very illuminating.
Democrat speech:
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/democratic-stump-speech/Republican speech:
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/stump-speech/