Snapshot of polling results among Republican voters over the past three months [click to embiggen]

At the moment, The Donald leads nationally among Republicans, with 29.8% favorability. Roughly 30% of polled Republicans currently favor Trump over the rest of the Republican Field of Clowns. People argue that 30 percent is not terribly impressive. Are they right?

You have to interpret more carefully than that. Roughly 30% of polled Republicans prefer Trump over the others. That last bit is important: that many other Clowns are vying for the prize matters in the interpretation of Trump’s 29.8 percent.

Since there are fifteen Clowns in this poll, an even distribution of favorability would be 6.7% per Clown. So Trump’s 29.8% is a pretty big outlier. How big? The mean of this favorability distribution is $\mu = 6.1$%, pretty close to the 6.7% expectation. The standard deviation of this distribution of Clown favorability ratings is $\sigma = 7.4$%. Trump’s $p = 29.8$% therefore is a $\Delta = \dfrac{\left|p\, – \mu\right|}{\sigma} = 3.2$-sigma outlier, which is statistically significant. What this means is that the chance of that being just a statistical fluke (i.e., the likelihood that a random choice from among a Gaussian distribution with $\mu = 6.1$% and $\sigma = 7.4$% would land you at 29.8% or higher) is $1 – \mathrm{erf} \left(\dfrac{\Delta}{\sqrt{2}}\right) = 0.0014 = 0.14$ percent.

In the physical sciences, a result lying three or more standard deviations away from the null hypothesis value is the typical bar for publishable significance. $\mathrm{erf}$ is the error function:

$$\mathrm{erf}(z) = \dfrac{1}{\sqrt{\pi}} \int_{-z}^z e^{-t^2} dt$$

and is the probability of a random variate lying between $-z$ and $+z$ in a distribution with zero mean and standard deviation $\frac 12$. Now, the 0.14% result above would hold if the favorability distribution were a normal (i.e., Gaussian) distribution, which it certainly is not. But the conclusions should correspond closely enough to reality to use as an approximate guide.

The next candidate down is Carson at 16.0%, and Bush is third at 8.3%. Carson is only 1.3 sigma out from the mean (Bush: $0.3\,\sigma$), which corresponds to the likelihood of his favorability rating being where it is or higher due to random chance is 18 percent (Bush: 77%).

Conclusion: Trump’s and Carson’s leads above the rest of this particular Republican Field of Clowns are currently significant, while for the rest it’s a coin toss in terms of preference — even for Bush.

Update 9/10: Numbers and graphic updated from original to reflect values current as of 10 September.