It won’t be official until 5:00 PM EDT today, but a last salvo of the kind of polls Fox has indicated will determine its top ten debate roster have come in today (Bloomberg, CBS News, and Fox News itself), and it’s semi-unanimous: the debaters on Thursday night will be Trump, Bush, Walker, Huckabee, Carson, Cruz, Rubio, Paul, Christie and Kasich. Actually, the CBS poll shows Perry ahead of Kasich, but all the others that will apparently determine the cut have Kasich ahead unless they go with big rounded numbers and let 11 debate.
The other consensus, of course, is that presently Donald Trump is holding the kind of lead no other candidate has enjoyed during the Invisible Primary: he’s up into the 20s in all three of the latest polls, and his favorable/unfavorable ratings–at least among Republicans–are steadily moving up to where it’s no longer certain he’s toast when the field is winnowed. Accordingly, all the confident talk just a few days ago about where Trump’s vote will go when he fades is slowly being adjusted to a more contingent if.
