If Pence runs, how would you rate his chances at winning the GOP nomination?

[Mister Mets]

8 percent or so. He has conventional qualifications, and appeal to crucial segments of the primary voters (midwestern voters, evangelicals). However, he has some weaknesses and there will be other candidates who will start out with more name recognition and have a better chance of winning.

He would probably start the race as a second-tier candidate. And I'd define second-tier as someone who may have the opportunity to move up to the first tier (see Huckabee in 2008.) But it would take him a lot of work to get to where Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan or Chris Christie would be on their first day in the race.

[Mister Mets]

I don't see name recognition as being that important in this case, especially since we have a GOP field with no one polling above 15%.  Name recognition is important in determining who leads the polls now, but I don't think it matters much in determining who will win in 18 months.

Look, you win Iowa, or even get in the top two or three there, then you have enough name recognition going forward.  So, would he be able to raise enough $ for some serious ad buys in the early primary states?  I'd assume that he could.  But really, it depends on whether some faction of party power brokers sees something appealing in him that puts him ahead of some of the other candidates.  If there is no faction that prefers him to his rivals, then obviously it isn't going to work out for him.

Name recognition matters because it means a candidate starts with an advantage, and can build on it. They don't need to convert as many voters to win the early states.

The Republican nomination tends to go to people with name recognition. Nixon was a former VP. Reagan was an also-ran/ Governor of California. George HW Bush was Veep. Dole was an also-ran/ Senate Majority Leader. George W Bush was a big-state Governor/ son of a former President. McCain was an also ran/ prominent Senator. Romney was an also-ran who had essentially been running for President for the last six years.

To have a credible shot at winning the presidency, Pence probably has to win Iowa. If an evangelical from Indiana can't win there, he's not going to do very well in the early primary states.

In any case, I think Pence is an under-considered possibility to be the nominee.  (OK, maybe not as under-considered here as in the MSM.)

Remember in 2008, when you had Giuliani, Huckabee, McCain, Romney, and Thompson all as serious contenders at various points in the campaign?  There was a clear divide between them and the Jim Gilmores, Duncan Hunters, and Tom Tancredos of the race, who were all at about 0 or 1% in the polls the entire time, and had no impact whatsoever.  There are only so many "serious contenders" in every presidential campaign, and yes, I do think Pence would manage to be one of them if he ran.  I don't think he'd be a Jim Gilmore.

*However*, this depends on his really wanting it.  That's an underappreciated trait in presidential candidates who overperform expectations.  Those who really want it tend to beat the odds, while folks like Fred Thompson and Rick Perry, who only get in the race because they think there's an opening and an easy path for them, tend to falter.

Pence might turn out to be a Rick Perry 2012-esque "I'm only running because there's an opening for me" type, and if so, his path to victory will probably turn out much rockier than he expects.

I'd differentiate here between first-tier candidates, second-tier candidates and third-tier candidates.

The first-tier are those initially acknowledged to be significant presidential contenders, likely polling at the top of the pack.

The second-tier are those who start at the bottom, but have a chance at the nomination.

The third-tier are those who will not be the nominee.

Jim Gilmore and Tom Tancredo were in the third tier. Huckabee was in the second tier.

Interestingly enough, Democrats seem comfortable nominating candidates who start out in the second tier. See Jimmy Carter, Mike Dukakis and Bill Clinton.

[Mister Mets]

Name recognition matters because it means a candidate starts with an advantage, and can build on it. They don't need to convert as many voters to win the early states.

The Republican nomination tends to go to people with name recognition. Nixon was a former VP. Reagan was an also-ran/ Governor of California. George HW Bush was Veep. Dole was an also-ran/ Senate Majority Leader. George W Bush was a big-state Governor/ son of a former President. McCain was an also ran/ prominent Senator. Romney was an also-ran who had essentially been running for President for the last six years.

All of those people (except, to a certain extent, McCain and Romney) were early frontrunners who used early leads to amass an enormous polling, fundraising, and institutional support advantage that they were able to survive any setbacks they later faced.  McCain and Romney were also early frontrunners, but they later lost their leads at least briefly, only to regain them.

At least as of right now, this race looks different from any of those, because there is no frontrunner.  No one is even polling higher than about 13% right now, even those who have name recognition advantages.  So these candidates who have been given this advantage of name recognition can't seem to do anything with it, at least not yet.  Thus, I'd say that the door's wide open for unknown candidates to come in and become viable challengers in their own right.

In fact, given that so much of momentum in the early primary states comes from outperforming expectations, there might actually be some benefit to starting out with low name recognition (and thus correspondingly low early poll numbers), and then breaking out in Iowa in the final months of the campaign, as voters actually start to pay attention.  That's what Huckabee was doing in 2007/2008, but he was a sufficiently flawed candidate that an Iowa win wasn't enough to win him the nomination.

An individual second-tier candidate has a shot at the nomination. But a first-tier candidate has a better chance.

While there may be an advantage to lower expectations, there are still some hurdles to clear. And there can be numerous second-tier candidates in the race.

The 2016 Republican primary could be similar to the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries, which lacked a clear frontrunner and were shaped by the people who decided not to run.

From the earliest polls, the first tier was John Kerry, Dick Gephardt, maybe Joe Lieberman and two who chose not to run: Al Gore and Hillary Clinton.

The second tier was Howard Dean, John Edwards and Wesley Clark.

The third tier no-hopers were Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton and Carol Mosely Braun.

Dean and Edwards came fairly close, and had risen to the first tier by the end. Although Kerry still won.

It's worth noting that there are some second-tier candidates who don't ever rise to the first tier. See Tim Pawlenty and Jon Huntsman.