Recent News

USA TODAY GOP Power Rankings: Carson and Fiorina fading

2016 begins with some outsider candidates finding themselves out of the picture in USA TODAY’s weekly GOP Power Rankings.

Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina tallied their worst scores this week since we started this survey Sept. 1, asking 30 political experts who is the strongest candidate in the GOP field.

With just a handful of weeks until the Iowa Caucuses, the race for the Republican presidential nomination is entering the home stretch.

Here’s a look at the 13 candidates remaining in the Republican field - and their path to victory … or defeat.

Every­one already knows the struggle for con­trol of the White House will be the biggest do­mest­ic story of 2016. The cam­paign has already gen­er­ated re­cord tele­vi­sion rat­ings and vol­can­ic erup­tions of vit­ri­ol. By Novem­ber, it is likely to be­come the most ex­pens­ive polit­ic­al race ever. Already, it is un­like any cam­paign Amer­ic­ans have seen be­fore.

Donald Trump, the national front-runner, keeps his big lead in two of the three early states of New Hampshire and South Carolina, but now Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has moved past Trump into a lead of his own in Iowa.

Christie Could Face Rocky Road After New Hampshire

Candidates who either start at the back of the pack or drop there later often pin their hopes on doing well in a single state, usually Iowa or New Hampshire, with the thought that a good showing there will catapult them into contention for the nomination. It’s not a bad strategy, but it does have a huge weakness – the difficulty in quickly building the sort of organization needed in the later states to remain competitive.

Politico this morning focuses on ... Read More >>

ll right, with the last Republican presidential debate of 2015 tonight, we’re approaching a period when the Republican primary should really start to get going — when the field should start to consolidate. So to get a sense for how the dominoes may tumble, we’re going to play “Dropout Draft.”

The Utah Re­pub­lic­an Party an­nounced that 12 can­did­ates qual­i­fied for the state’s March 22 pres­id­en­tial caucuses. Former Vir­gin­ia Gov. Jim Gilmore (R) and former New York Gov. George Pa­taki (R) failed to make the cut.