The First GOP Primary Poll That Matters (For Getting On Debate Stage)
Photo by The White House from Washington, DC, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Read it and weep, ye GOP primary candidates who poll below “Someone Else,” “Not Voting,” “Undecided,” and “Would rather contract a lingering gastrointestinal illness.
From The Morning Dispatch:
Morning Consult released the first poll of the GOP presidential field that meets the Republican National Committee’s criteria for qualifying for the party’s August primary debate in Milwaukee. Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Chris Christie, and Asa Hutchinson all met or surpassed the 1 percent threshold, but GOP hopefuls will need to earn at least 1 percent support in two more national polls (or one more national and one state poll) and garner 40,000 individual donors to qualify for the debate. Christie and Scott both announced yesterday that they had met the donor requirements.
You can read all the various breakdowns, data, and methodologies here.
With the GOP field set, we are in a bit of a silly season of the 2024 campaign since there isn’t anything going on until we get to that first August debate. Which, by the way, Trump may skip entirely as he is already doing with a candidate forum in Iowa hosted by Tucker Carlson. Polling this far out and with nothing really going on other than media hits and the usual campaigning means any analysis of the GOP primary is more conjecture than anything else.
However, there is a distinct pattern forming here, and the meaningful bits of this race and the data we do have are pretty static. No one is anywhere close to Trump, and DeSantis is not only failing to make up ground, but is sliding back. For Vivek Ramaswamy, who is a Donald Trump surrogate in everything but name, to be in third and MAGA pariah Mike Pence in fourth — and both of them part of the single digit polling club along with the also-rans — is telling.
All four early states have Trump with sizable leads, even Iowa where Trump ran 3rd in 2016. Unlike 2016, Trump’s support number is steady, substantial and not moving. The national numbers are what they are and, until we get into the fall, don’t mean a whole lot other than popularity and name recognition. So, what about those early GOP primary polls? Trump is up over 20 points in Iowa and New Hampshire in polling so far, and while Nevada has yet to have dependable polling, “preference” polls have Trump with a 30-point lead in a state he narrowly lost in 2020. More telling, in South Carolina — a state in which the GOP Primary field consists of a sitting US Senator and former governor — Trump is also significantly ahead. In a crowded primary field where getting around that 30 percent mark will probably win, Trump is well clear of that mark.
“It’s early,” everyone including me says. And it is. But as July is half gone and August and September loom, at what point does the static nature of Trump’s support just override all other political calculations? The premise of every non-Trump campaign, including Ron DeSantis, is to be an alternative to Trump. We have yet to see any evidence, polling or otherwise, that the base of the GOP as it stands today wants an alternative to Trump in sufficient numbers to deny him the 2024 GOP nomination for president.
Trump’s been indicted multiple times, had the post-election mess and 60-odd court defeats over the bogus election narrative, might get indicted some more, the January 6th disaster, and dozens of other things that hurt the non-base’s opinion of him. Is there any reason to think there is anything at all coming down the pike that is going to convince the folks that still support Donald J. Trump not to vote for him after all this? Perhaps it is time to admit we are not dealing with politics here, but the actual demographic group of “shoot someone on 5th Avenue and still vote for me” folks. They aren’t persuadable or, if you are a GOP candidate not named Trump, gettable.
Trump might well be the ultimate identity politics figure. He’s more an avatar to his supporters than politician. Yet, again and again, folks try to put a political calculation or electoral strategy on how you solve a problem like The Donald. The GOP primary poll is showing the other candidates have also made that error trying to be the cut-rate version when the real thing is still available.
But I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong plenty before. I was wrong about Biden in 2020. That was also my failure to properly understand Trump. Maybe I, and some other folks, can learn and adapt and get it right this time. It feels like Trump is just calcified in his base support, which will be enough to win him the 2024 GOP nomination despite the howling and gnashing of teeth involved. However, he has lost the support of just about everyone else and should have no chance in a general election at all, in which you can expect another record-breaking turnout for Joe Biden if Trump is opposing him on the ballot. Not because President Biden, with all due respect, is all that great, but we now know the greatest voting bloc in the American electorate is the anti-Trump vote, with the Trump vote being second.
As in every election, math will be winning in 2024.
FWIW, before this polling came out, I was on TYT with Dr. Rashad Richey talking about this very topic earlier in the week. Video is here:
It’s interesting how DeSantis’s support fell with the media / left’s relentless attack, despite him not kowtowing to them. It reminds me of Santorum. Some candidates get attacked as outside the mainstream, and the lower-information Republicans take the attacks to heart. My hope is that people will accept DeSantis, although he doesn’t have the most comfortable nature.
The question is, if DeSantis and Scott aren’t making a dent, will someone else step in? The problem is, the kind of person that the institutional party would turn to as a rescuer isn’t the kind of person who could meet the challenge.Report
Right. The rejoinder to your question is, who (other than DeSantis) did you have in mind?Report
I think a Cotton or a Cruz could win the party’s base, but the leadership would eye a Romney or Hogan. Sununu would be a Hail Mary.Report
Not on Team Vivek, I see. (LOL.)Report
I Lik Vivek?Report
Desantis & Co have to pound the drum: “If you vote for Trump, you are electing Biden/Harris.”
If “Trump can’t win” isn’t enough to convert a Trump voter, nothing else will. And if the GOP still nominates the clown, they deserve what they get.Report
They.
Don’t.
Care.
The base is in a war to reclaim a political and economic control they believe was taken from them. They want enemies. They want bullying. Some want violence. They don’t want policy debates – they want shows of raw power in the way men were men in the 1950’s or so.
Senior republicans – who value their positions and power more than functional democracy – are happy to give them this. Because the GOP controls enough states and enough of the federal judiciary so that loosing the White House again doesn’t necessarily matter. If they can keep the House and retake the senate, keep their state control and throw enough red meat to the base then Trump winning doesn’t really matter.Report
Re Doug Burgum of North Dakota… Most people think it’s just an ego campaign. I think it’s slightly more than that, he’s trying a Jay Inslee thing. Inslee knew he wasn’t going to win but his presence ensured that: (a) the moderators had to ask at least a couple of climate change questions and (b) other candidates had to go farther than Inslee, that is, “My climate change plan will spend more money and have earlier deadlines for getting off fossil fuels than Jay’s.” Burgum wants to do that but for mandating continued use of coal and natural gas.Report
I don’t love the idea of it being Trump again but the stars do seem to be aligning for a Trump renomination. If the GOP’s primaries weren’t majority take all I’d feel like there’d be more doubt but with a crowded field Trump can easily win with a dedicated plurality.
I think John Puccio is correct that Trump being a shoe in for Biden is likely more correct than not. Biden’s sitting in a good position on everything except approval ratings right now*: The economy is still rumbling along with fantastic employment; inflation is falling back towards the Fed’s 2% target very well; Bidens play for infrastructure and Global Warming/chips centered industrial policy seems to be performing tolerably and the over/under on Ukraine looks favorable.
*Of course a lot can happen in fifteen months.Report