‘Not Happening Any Time Soon’: Ruth Marcus on Prediction Trump Is Going Down

DICKERSON: “Let me — let me move on to presidential politics. Presidential politics and — and what we’ve just been discussing, has people interested. In our new CBS poll, 71 percent of registered voters think this is an interesting campaign and more people are paying attention now than at this point in the campaign in the last two presidential cycles. Is that all Donald Trump’s —“
MARCUS: “Ratings are good. It’s all about the ratings.”
DICKERSON: “Yes, it’s all about — it’s all about Donald Trump. Yes, but people are interested.”
MARCUS: “People are interested and they should be interested because it’s very important for the future of the country. Whether they’re getting to the right results with their interests is something else to answer. I mean I think that if you look especially on the Republican side, at a few things that are very striking in this poll. First of all, Donald Trump’s resilience. People like me keep telling themselves he’s going to fade, he’s going away. I saw these numbers going down. Not going to happen, or at least not happening any time soon. The second thing that’s really striking is Carson’s incredible popularity, not just where he is in the polls, at 20 percent, but as a second choice for a lot of people, including these Trump supporters. He is another astonishing phenomenon that undergirds this number from Republican voters that’s incredible. Fifty something percent want somebody with experience in the private sector, just 12 percent of these Republican voters want somebody with government or political experience.”