Once again, at least as far as winning the GOP nomination goes, events appear to be working out to the advantage of former President Donald Trump.
Republican detractors of the 45th president widely hoped that the entrance of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis into the primary race would put Trump on the run.
After all, DeSantis is a highly popular governor whose track record has been widely lauded among the base. Prior to his foray into presidential politics, DeSantis was seen far and wide in conservative circles as the logical “successor” to Trump, although DeSantis’ decision to run against Trump, rather than wait for an open race in 2028, has infuriated a large segment of the base and essentially split the party.
Nevertheless, while DeSantis’ support is not negligible, it appears that Trump’s bloc of loyal support has, as anticipated, held firm.
While the exact numbers vary from survey to survey, the consensus among the polling taken in the wake of DeSantis’ campaign announcement last month is that Trump leads the Florida governor by double digits.
As Business Insider reports of a new Monmouth poll:
Monmouth’s tracking poll is held in high esteem — the pollster enjoys an ‘A’ rating according to FiveThirtyEight — and its tracking of Trump’s rise is consistent with other recent polling into the state of the GOP primary.
In May, according to the poll of 655 Republican and Republican-leaning voters, 43% said they wanted to see Trump as the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 while just 19% said the same about DeSantis.
Even National Review, which has a reputation of holding Trump in disdain, found itself forced to admit that the 45th president has an edge over DeSantis as far as electability. Contrary to what many talking heads have said of late, polling from RealClearPolitics suggests that Trump is more likely than DeSantis to defeat Biden in the general election.
National Review notes:
In the RealClearPolitics average, Trump is currently ahead of Biden by 1.4 percentage points, and DeSantis is ahead by six-tenths of one percentage point. State polling may be a different matter, but right now, it isn’t glaringly obvious that DeSantis is a more competitive general-election candidate. (This may change as voters get more familiar with DeSantis.)
There is a logic to this that has flown under the radar of many political observers, especially those who want to see DeSantis, not Trump, as the Republican nominee.
Namely, Biden does not enjoy the same advantages against Trump that he did in 2020. In that race, only 44,000 votes in the states of Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin separated Biden and Trump from a tie in the Electoral College.
In that close race, the huge boost that Covid-19 gave to Biden cannot be overstated.
While the talk about voter fraud in 2020 often focuses on the machines, one cannot look at the matter in earnest without focusing on the mail-in voting. The Covid-19 outbreak provided the justification for localities throughout the country to employ an unprecedented level of universal mail-in voting.
While some (mostly blue) states have codified universal mail-in voting for future elections in perpetuity, in most places the practice has been discontinued due to the subsidence of Covid. The 2024 election will not be marked by the flood of mail-in ballots as 2020 was.
Furthermore, there’s an important psychological aspect of Covid-19 that played a role in 2020 that will no longer be a factor in 2024: The electorate, especially low-information voters (who are a not-insignificant share of voters), tends to punish whichever president and party is in power when a big crisis hits, regardless of whether they were at fault or not. It’s a phenomenon of “this happened under your watch, therefore, you’re responsible.”
This was the case in 2008; George W. Bush was in office when the financial crisis happened, so voters took it out on Republicans and elected Democrat Barack Obama.
In the same way, voters took out all their frustration — with lockdowns, COVID-related deaths, unemployment, and being stuck isolated at home with nothing to do — on Trump.
In 2024, this will no longer be a factor. And another Covid-like pandemic isn’t likely to hit because the establishment wouldn’t want a crisis like that to hurt Biden’s chances of reelection.
What all this points to is that Trump’s chances at the nomination and victory in the general election continue to grow. And his fortunes are looking to rise further with the expected entry into the field of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie next week, as well as the possible entrances of former Vice President Mike Pence and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.
Because Trump has a steady hold on his base, a crowded field only plays to his favor, with each new contender carving up the anti-Trump vote even more. With most state primaries being winner-take-all, he only needs a plurality in each contest to come out on top.
Despite attacks from the media and the Deep State, Trump looks to be on the path to potentially pulling off another upset win.
