As you may have heard, two more candidates have entered the G.O.P. primary contest: Ben Carson, the famous neurosurgeon from Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, who turned to conservative politics a few years ago, and Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard. And Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, who ran for the Republican nomination in 2008, is expected to announce his candidacy on Tuesday.

With Huckabee in, there will be six confirmed candidates. The other three are all senators: Ted Cruz (Texas), Rand Paul (Kentucky), and Marco Rubio (Florida). Then there are Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, who are both busy raising money and making what amount to campaign speeches, but who have yet to make their candidacies official. Beyond these eight lie a host of maybes, wannabes, and long shots. They include the former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum and the former Texas governor Rick Perry, both of whom lost to Mitt Romney in 2012; John Kasich, the governor of Ohio; Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana; Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina; Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey; and Donald Trump, the governor of Trump Tower and a bunch of upscale golf resorts.

If your head is spinning, join the club. Nobody should be expected, or forced, to keep up with every detail of the G.O.P. primary, especially when, Lord help us, we still have more than eight months to go until the Iowa caucuses. At this stage, the important thing to remember is that there are really two spectacles taking place: a high-stakes horse race for the Republican nomination, and a circus held on the infield of the track. Although the events run concurrently, and are ostensibly geared toward the same end, they shouldn’t be confused with one another. One is a serious political contest. The other is a sideshow, designed to amuse the spectators, give the media something to cover, and further the ambitions, varied as they are, of the participants.

Ostensibly, the G.O.P. field looks confusing and wide open. In many polls, nobody gets the support of even twenty per cent of potential Republican voters. But if you allow for some variability from survey to survey, a distinctive pattern has emerged. The Real Clear Politics poll of polls, which combines data from many individual polls, shows that Bush has been in the lead for most of the past six months, and that he’s still ahead, with a polling average of 15.5 per cent. Rubio has been gaining ground since he announced his candidacy three weeks ago, and is now in second place, at 14.3 per cent. Walker, who enjoyed a surge earlier this year, is now in third place, with 12.8 per cent.

Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, the horse race is settling down, with Bush as the front runner, Walker and Rubio tucked in behind, and Paul and Cruz further back. A new survey, by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, confirms this picture—indeed, it suggests that the front runners may be pulling a bit further ahead. The poll showed Bush at twenty-three per cent, Rubio at eighteen per cent, and Walker at fourteen per cent. Paul and Cruz were both at eleven per cent.*

Huckabee could yet emerge as a sixth serious contender. A fixture on conservative television and radio, the Arkansan will pick up votes from evangelical Christians, although it’s hard to see him expanding much beyond that demographic. The rest in the field look as though they are destined for the circus. Of course, one of them could still burst through the rails and join the front-runners, as Herman Cain did for a time in 2011. But the polls, the money, and the political topography are against them.

The ultra-conservative end of the field is already crowded, with Walker, Paul, and Cruz competing against each other, and Huckabee and Carson about to join them. Carson, an African-American who grew up in a poor family in Detroit, has a compelling personal story to tell, and his message of small government and self-reliance goes over well with many Republicans. But the long buildup to his campaign launch has been marked by a series of inflammatory statements, including one, while he was discussing same-sex marriage, in 2013, in which he equated gays with members of NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association. (He later apologized.) And in March of this year, he said that being gay is a choice, and added, “A lot of people who go into prison straight, and when they come out they’re gay.’ ” It’s not clear whether Carson has been deliberately outrageous in order to attract the attention of right-wing talk-show hosts, or whether he is just gaffe-prone. In either case, he is looking increasingly like a fringe candidate.

The moderate-conservative end of the G.O.P. field has a bit more space open than the conservative end. With Chris Christie’s candidacy snarled up in the Fort Lee traffic, Bush and Rubio are the two leading contenders in this part of the spectrum—although, as I’ve noted before, it’s far from clear that either of them deserves to be called a moderate. Potentially, there is room for an avowedly non-ideological candidate who can reach across party lines, and Fiorina may be aiming to occupy it. Since entering politics, she has adopted conservative positions on issues such as climate change, same-sex marriage, and eliminating the estate tax. In the campaign (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/05/04/carly_fiorina_targets_hillary_in_campaign_announcement_video.html) announcing her candidacy on Monday, however, she didn't focus on any of these things. Instead, she attacked Hillary Clinton, but also, by extension, many of her Republican rivals, saying, “Our founders never intended us to have a professional political class.... If you’re tired of the sound bites, the vitriol, the pettiness, the egos, the corruption... then join us.”

As the only woman likely to enter the G.O.P. field, and a possible foil for Clinton, Fiorina is guaranteed to receive some media attention. Her challenge is that many people don’t think she has much of a record to run on. If this were 1998, when she was a senior executive at Lucent Technologies, and Fortune magazine named her as the most powerful women in business, she would be in better shape. However, her tenure as Hewlett-Packard’s C.E.O., from 1999 to 2005, was widely criticized, and ended with the board of directors forcing her out (albeit with the consolation of a twenty-million-dollar golden parachute). In 2010, she ran for the U.S. Senate in California, and Barbara Boxer beat her handily. During the campaign, the Los Angeles Times reported that Fiorina hadn’t voted in numerous elections. She apologized, saying, “Shame on me.”

Currently, Fiorina is running dead last in the G.O.P. polls, but she was visited New Hampshire on Monday, attending a luncheon with local lawmakers and pressing the flesh. In the early stages of Presidential races, hope springs eternal. And even if things don’t work out for her campaign, it will probably help her sell some books. As it happens, she’s got a new one that is being released on Tuesday: “Rising to the Challenge: My Leadership Journey.”

* This post was updated to include data from the latest opinion polls.