As of late March, Jeb Bush and Scott Walker were tied in national polls of Republicans (judging from the averages at RealClearPolitics). They are neck-and-neck in New Hampshire; Walker leads in Iowa and Bush in South Carolina. It’s a race without a clear front-runner, but with two candidates ahead of the rest.
Republican primaries usually follow a pattern. The party’s elected officials and big donors tend to cluster behind one or two candidates; activists who consider that “party establishment” insufficiently conservative split among several candidates; and the leading establishment candidate wins. But the anti-establishment tendencies of Republicans have been growing. Mitt Romney, running as the establishment candidate, won the nomination in 2012, but Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, running to his right, got more votes in combination in primaries they all contested.
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