A conversation about the state of the Republican presidential nominating contest veered off course Friday as FiveThirtyEight editor Nate Silver broke down the GOP race in terms of media habits. “Bush can win the Morning Joe Republicans, but Rubio can win the Rush Limbaugh Republicans. There are a lot more Rush Republicans than Morning Joe Republicans,” he said.
Clare Malone, a senior political writer at the site, added, “And Kasich wins the Charlie Rose Republicans.”
That, in turn led to this exchange:
micah: Is that true? You got numbers to back that up, Mr. Silver?
harry: Well, for one thing, “Morning Joe” is on MSNBC. I don’t know many Republicans watching that.
clare.malone: According to The New York Times, all the Washington Kingmakers are watching “Joe,” at the very least.
harry: I know one guy watching “Morning Joe” who is a Republican. His net worth is in the millions, and he’s a postgraduate living in NYC.
clare.malone: Can I have his number, Harry?
natesilver: Rush has a huge audience. About 13 million people per week. And most of those are red-meat Republicans rather than RINOs. “Morning Joe” gets something like 500,000 viewers per day, by contrast, so maybe in the range of 1-2 million per week, depending on how much overlap there is in their audience from day to day?
clare.malone: I don’t even remember what we’re talking about now, what with all this “Morning Joe”-ness.
natesilver: Yeah, we’ve gotten diverted here. The key part of the story is that there doesn’t seem to be much of a market for Bush among actual Republican voters. As we’ve seen by his lack of ability to get actual Republican votes.