By The Cornhusker Guardian’s Editorial Board
Endorsements by former President Donald J. Trump have proved exceedingly valuable to candidates who received them during this year’s primary election cycle. Newsweek reported today that Mr. Trump was 22-0 in the success of his endorsements during last week’s primaries and 55-0 for the entire 2022 primary season.
And despite the weeks-long pounding that Charles W. Herbster has taken from what Mr. Trump and Mr. Herbster have called the “Republican Establishment“ based on “groping allegations” by persons with demonstrated ties to the Jim Pillen campaign and Gov. Pete Ricketts’ political machine, Mr. Herbster still holds a projected half point lead (29.9% to 29.4%) over Dr. Pillen in a report and chart published today by the Nebraska Examiner.
According to that same report, Sen. Brett Lindstrom trails Mr. Herbster by 9.2% with 20.7% of the projected vote, while former Sen. Theresa Thibodeau registers only 7.4% of the forecasted ballots, followed by a tie between Michael Connely and Donna Carpenter, each with 3.2%. Breeland Ridenour and Lela McNinch brought up the rear with 3.1% and 3.0% of the projected ballots respectively.
The projections in the Examiner story were made by Logan Phillips, a policy analyst whose RacetotheWH.com correctly projected that author and Trump endorsee J.D. Vance would win the GOP’s U.S. Senate primary in Ohio last Tuesday. According to today’s story, which was broken by Examiner reporter Aaron Sanderford, Mr. Phillips cautioned that Mr. Herbster, Dr. Pillen and Sen. Lindstrom all had a chance to win the election tomorrow. According to the Sanderford Examiner story:
RacetotheWH.com gives Herbster a 44% chance of winning, Pillen a 42% chance of winning, and Lindstrom a 14% chance. Phillips projects that all three candidates will secure between 20% and 30% of the vote.
Phillips bases his projections on who wins most often out of 10,000 simulations. He factors in polling, fundraising, endorsements, election experience and Google searches in the race’s last week.
Most polling shows only those three within range of winning the primary among nine GOP candidates in the race.
Mr. Herbster, however, is the only Nebraska gubernatorial candidate to win the endorsement of former President Trump. Mr. Trump not only appeared in person at the Herbster I-80 Speedway rally in Greenwood on May 1st, but he also reiterated his endorsement of Mr. Herbster at the Trump tele-rally on Thursday.
Although Mr. Phillips said that, “Trump’s influence has been less than” he had expected, history has shown that “outsider candidates” sometimes “under poll” because people who support them against “establishment” candidates often will not disclose that fact to pollsters, even though they pull the lever for the “outsider” candidate in the privacy of a voting booth.
The Cornhusker Guardian encourages its readers to follow the conclusion of tomorrow’s election story late tomorrow night or early Wednesday morning in a special edition of The Cornhusker Guardian
