The Fix: 42 percent of Republicans can’t see themselves voting for Bush. That’s not as bad as it seems.

By Philip Bump March 9 at 12:56 PM

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released over the weekend offers some sobering news for former Florida governor Jeb Bush. A full 42 percent of respondents say that they couldn't see themselves voting for him to be their party's presidential nominee, vs. 49 percent who say they could. If Bush garnered only 49 percent of the vote in the caucuses, he could do as badly as John McCain in 2008 or Bob Dole in 1996. If he didn't reach 49 percent of the total votes in the primaries? He could be another also-ran, just like Barack Obama in 2008.

In other words: 49 percent of the vote might be enough.

Dave Leip's U.S. Election Atlas has data on the percentage of support earned by candidates in each party's contested primaries dating to 1992. We pulled the numbers and made the following graph to illustrate the point above.

McCain and Dole each received less support in the year's caucuses than an opponent. Which doesn't mean that they lost the caucuses, necessarily; Dole won Iowa in 1996. Win a caucus by a narrow margin and get blown out in others, and the balance gets lopsided. Neither received the plurality of support in caucuses overall -- but clearly it didn't matter.

Primaries are more important than caucuses, of course, because there are many more. In 2008, Obama received fewer votes in the primaries than Hillary Clinton, but won the caucuses handily. It was enough to put him over the top overall -- even with only 47 percent of primary votes.

Only one candidate has received less than 49 percent support in the caucuses and the primaries and won the nomination since 1992: McCain, in what, in retrospect, doesn't seem like it was that hotly contested a race. In part, that's a function of the number of candidates who were playing in the mix; four candidates received more than 10 percent of the total caucus or primary votes. In 2016, it seems very possible that more than two candidates will similarly pull a lot of support because the filed is likely to be historically large.

In fact, there's perhaps no bottom boundary for how little support it might take to be a nominee. Get four candidates with strong bases of support, and someone could win the nomination with 30 percent of the caucus and primary vote. There are other effects -- jumps for vote totals after the nomination is settled, for example -- that can influence the final results but, in theory, that scenario is possible. When the votes come in is far more important than what the percentages look like.

Of course Bush would rather have 100 percent of Republicans backing him enthusiastically. But saying that only 49 percent support him tepidly doesn't mean he won't be the nominee. Nor does it mean he won't be the next president.

Philip Bump writes about politics for The Fix. He is based in New York City.