House Speaker Faces Growing Primary Threat

A couple of weeks ago in Pricing in President Trump, looking at the various trends in politics. There is still no opposition to the Trump/Sanders phenomena and Trump has the lead in this regard because he also has a monopoly on immigration restriction. I closed with a look at a primary challenger to House Speaker Paul Ryan. Two years ago, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor became the highest ranking Congressman to ever lose a primary election. This was a watershed election that hinged in part on immigration, yet media and politicians alike ignored the implications. The challenge to Paul Ryan, the GOP's Vice Presidential candidate in 2012 and now House Speaker, would be an even greater shock, since the only thing bigger than his loss would be the loss of a sitting President. Even though there was no polling, I wrote:

There's little polling data so it is impossible to make predictions, but undoubtedly if there was a market, it would be mispricing the odds of a Ryan defeat.

I wish I could have made that bet.

Breitbart: Paul Ryan Plummets to 43 Percent in New Primary Poll

A poll of likely Republican voters shows House Speaker Paul Ryan well below 50 percent in his race to maintain his seat in Wisconsin’s first Congressional district.
The poll was conducted by P.M.I., with 424 respondents randomly called from a file of 11,000 likely GOP primary voters. It shows that with one month remaining before Wisconsin’s August 9th vote, Ryan is polling at 43 percent.

Ryan’s challenger, Wisconsin businessman Paul Nehlen, is polling at 32 percent.

The Nehlen campaign notes that Ryan’s 43 percent “represents a drop of more than 30 points since the Nehlen campaign began polling likely Republican primary voters earlier in the year.”

...“Paul Ryan is the most open borders, pro-Wall Street, anti-worker member of Congress in either party,” Paul Nehlen said during a Saturday press conference, which was held in front of Ryan’s border wall surrounding his Janesville mansion. “Everything that Americans despise about their government, Paul Ryan represents… Can you name one time when Paul Ryan fought as hard for you and your family as he’s fought for corporate America?” Nehlen asked.

Generally speaking, when incumbents poll below 50 percent, they stand a good chance of losing. There's a month to go and Nehlen could see an inflow of cash now that this race has become interesting. Again, if I were placing bets here, I would take the market odds on a Ryan loss. No one is looking for this and it would be yet another signpost on the road to political realignment in America, as well as another piece of evidence pointing to a Trump win in November.