christmas gift, folks, go follow rand paul s twitter from yesterday. because he was celebrating festivus. it s one of the funniest thing. the entire day he was airing out grievances. it s not the kind of guy you think has a sense of humor. but somewhere deep inside there, there s one line inside the man. oh, how much i love you. jeff f you re advising rand paul, do you advise him maybe not the best thing to already say you won t go on you won t take part in the undercard debate? yeah. to the point here, really, i think we re beginning to see the win noti winnoing of the field. rand got out, proceeded by governor walker, and governor perry, and governor jindal. when you re running at 4% in the polls, as senator paul is, he s a good person. but i think this means political reality is beginning to catch up
but trump has seen a 20% jump in favorability since september which suggests the republican voters are getting more comfortable with him. and this is interesting also on the issue of voters optimism, the republican voters optimism about their chances in 2016 with trump in the picture as opposed to without trump. that number has jumped since august by 8 percentage points now up to 46%. another sign that discomfort with trump appears to be easing. now, as to your question about what this means for debates, the main thing to focus on is that based on the latest polling, it looks like there will be six candidates in the main event. trump, cruz, rubio, carson, bush and christie. six candidates in the undercard debate, rand paul, john kasich, carly fiorina, mike huckabee, rick santorum and george pataki.
i m not going to vote. i m being very high-minded about it. that thrills the koch brothers. i mean they do high fives when they see polling like that. last night fox business network announced their criteria for making the main stage in the next republican debate. to make the cut, fox says candidates must place in the top six nationally, or place in the top five in iowa or new hampshire. all polling data will be based on the five most recent polls recognized by fox news. and according to calculations, by politico, only six candidates are likely to qualify for the main event on january 14th. and according to politico, calculations based on national and state polling available as of yesterday, the prime-time debate stage would look like this, six candidates here. donald trump, ted cruz, marco rubio, ben carson, jeb bush, and chris christie. that would mean john kasich, carly fiorina and rand paul would be out of the main event and into the undercard debate. with just 40 days until th
speaking of the donald, he may want to watch his back in case hillary clinton is not the democratic nominee. a new quinnipiac university poll shows him losing to bernie sanders in a general election by 13 percentage points. that s nearly double the advantage hillary clinton has over the donald in the same poll. and fox business network has released their criteria for making the main stage in their upcoming rnc debate on january 14th. based on the five most recent polls recognized by fox, candidates must either place in the top six nationally, or top five in iowa or new hampshire. according to politico this likely means the debate will include only trump, ted cruz, marco rubio, ben carson, jeb bush, and chris christie. all other candidates with at least one percentage in polling will be kicked down to the undercard debate. and that is your morning dish of scrambled politics. msnbc political reporter jane timm is here once again this morning. good morning. let s talk a little bit
fox business is going to give you an opportunity to hear more often from them and perhaps more substance from them. robert, what are we hearing from the campaigns on the news that broke last night there may be only six candidates on the debate stable? checking in with several of the campaigns, there s a lot of anxiety. there s a feeling among the strategist you make the undercard debate. it might as well be political debt. very few people have been able to emerge. being there in january, that s not where you want to be. the kasich campaign would be for that. carly also jumped up to the main stab stage and be back down. and with just 40 days to the iowa caucuses, more than $111 million has been spent during the 2016 presidential race so far with a third of that spending support of jeb bush.