The Paris Attacks Had Zero Impact on the Republican Race

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Here’s the most recent Pollster aggregate of the GOP primary contest. Donald Trump’s scheme to prove that Republican voters are the most gullible people on the planet continues apace. (Seriously folks: you all have blowhards in your life, don’t you? You know what they’re like, and you wouldn’t trust one of them to be dogcatcher, let alone president. Surely you recognize Trump as one of the same breed?)

But enough of that. The reason I’m putting up the latest standings is this: despite the maunderings of various pundits, it looks like the Paris attacks had exactly zero impact on the race. All five of the leading candidates were on a trajectory before the attacks, and they continued that trajectory very precisely afterward. There’s not so much as a blip in the polling data.

Debates seem to have an effect on Trump and Carson. Nothing much seems to have had an effect on the others. They’ve been on cruise control for the past month. But the Paris attacks? Whatever you felt about the candidates before, apparently they made you feel exactly the same way afterward, except more.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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