2016: Republicans are acting like Democrats and vice versa

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is the only candidate with any endorsements from current governors or U.S. senators and representatives. And she has a boatload of them: 88 representatives, 27 senators and two governors have endorsed Clinton, giving her 243 endorsement points, the highest figure ever at this stage of the race for a Democrat.

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Republicans, however, haven’t fallen in line behind anyone. Jeb Bush is the nominal endorsement front-runner, but his 18 endorsement points are the lowest total for any leader at this point in the campaign since Tsongas in 1992. Only two Republican governors and three Republican senators have endorsed any candidate at all…

The smart money is still on the GOP eventually falling in line. Unlike Senate and gubernatorial primaries, which are one-off deals, the presidential nomination process proceeds for months, with states voting one at a time or in small groups. An anti-establishment candidate who wins a couple of early states, as Newt Gingrich did in 2012, may be quashed later on as the party rallies its resources against him. So it’s worth tracking endorsements, both for establishmentarian candidates like Jeb Bush and for others like Scott Walker who toe the line between running as “insiders” and “outsiders.”

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