Where the GOP race stands
Byron York
WHERE THE GOP RACE STANDS. We’ve now had a few weeks of a multicandidate race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. It’s not where it eventually will be — some new candidates will undoubtedly join the race in the coming weeks and months. But there is more frequent polling than there was a few months ago, and it is possible to get an idea of the contours of the race as it stands at this moment.
Of course, “multicandidate race” sounds a little grand. Right now, only former President Donald Trump and former South Carolina Gov. and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley are declared candidates. There is also the entrepreneur and anti-woke campaigner Vivek Ramaswamy, who is in the asterisk category when it comes to support.
But Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, while not formally declared, has been acting like a candidate recently, using a book tour as a vehicle for a de facto presidential campaign. It is possible — likely? — that more support for him will show up in the polls, but so far, we do not have any good surveys done in the month of March. We’ll see if DeSantis rises. As it is, he is by far the strongest non-Trump candidate in the race.
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In addition, former Vice President Mike Pence is making noise with a speech to Washington insiders in which he condemned Trump’s actions of Jan. 6, 2021. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is acting like a candidate and has been for months. And South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott is hearing encouraging things from many Republicans about a possible run. So the field will likely get bigger, although not as big as the 16-candidate crowd in 2016, the last time there was an open GOP primary race.
So, where are things now? The RealClearPolitics average — remember, these are all national polls — shows Trump in the lead with 43% of the vote, DeSantis next with 28.3%, Pence with 6.5%, Haley with 6.2%, and Pompeo with 2%. The poll also shows Sen. Ted Cruz, who has shown no signs of running, with 2%, former Rep. Liz Cheney with 2%, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem with 1%, and Scott with 1%.
First, a note — the polls are all over the place. There is an Emerson poll, taken in late February, that showed Trump with a 30-point lead. There is a Susquehanna poll, taken just a few days earlier, that pegged Trump’s lead at 2 points. A Fox News poll before that had Trump up 15 points, while a Harvard-Harris poll a few days earlier had Trump up by 23. A Quinnipiac poll before that had Trump leading by 6 points, and a Reuters-Ipsos poll had Trump up by 12.
Nevertheless, looking at 31 polls going back to July 1 of last year, it appears Trump has lost a bit of altitude in the race. Surveys back then routinely had him ahead of the field by more than 25 points. Now, it’s less than that.
But it’s also true that Trump still has a commanding lead in the national Republican contest. In the latest RCP average, he leads DeSantis by 14.7 points, Pence and Haley by more than 36 points, and everybody else by more than 40 points. We’ll see what happens when DeSantis starts his real campaign. If the trend of the last several months continues, the race will tighten, but we don’t know how much.
At the moment, though, there is an unstated longing in much analysis of the race coming from Republican and conservative observers. They want the Republican Party to move on from Trump, and they are looking for signs that the party is, in fact, moving on. But the numbers are what they are. At the moment, Trump remains the dominant force in the presidential race. That might change once the race is fully underway. But for that to happen, a lot of Republican minds will have to change.
Some are hoping that an indictment of Trump might help that process along. At this moment, Democratic prosecutors in New York and Georgia are moving toward charging Trump, and the Justice Department is pursuing a broad investigation of him. In all cases, the prosecutors appear to be racing in order to beat the clock before their indictments would be seen as overt interference in a presidential election.
There is a huge possibility at least some of the indictments will backfire on those who hope they will blow Trump out of the race. The New York case appears to be weak, convoluted, and novel, and it will likely lead reasonable observers to think that prosecutors are stretching the law in an effort to get Trump. In short, it is politically motivated, and Trump supporters will see it as exactly what the former president says it is — a witch hunt. They might also see the Georgia case, based on Trump’s effort to find votes to pull ahead of Joe Biden in the 2020 election, the same way, especially after a series of weird public statements made by the forewoman of the grand jury.
That leaves the Justice Department, which is investigating the Trump classified documents matter as well as Trump’s actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. The documents case will be much harder to make after the discovery that President Joe Biden also mishandled classified documents. Trump supporters, and perhaps others, will likely see a fundamental unfairness if Trump is prosecuted while the Biden case goes away. (Remember that DOJ policy holds that Biden, as sitting president, cannot be indicted, just as Trump could not be indicted when he was in the White House.) Finally, there is the DOJ’s Jan. 6 case, which seems impossible to predict.
Will indictments change the fundamentals of the 2024 Republican race? It depends. It seems unlikely that a New York indictment, at the moment thought to be imminent, would have much, if any, effect on Trump’s GOP support. It might even increase, or at least solidify, that support because it will add to the list of grievances of Trump supporters who believe — not without reason — that Trump was unfairly pursued during his presidency. The same might be true of a Georgia indictment. It’s hard to say what might happen after DOJ action.
Meanwhile, Trump sits at the head of the group of Republican presidential contenders. Observers might wish that were not so. But it is. It seems likely that the only thing that might change the situation is a vigorous campaign in which Trump’s challengers make the case for themselves, and against him, in a way that unites a majority of the Republican Party. Trump’s decline shows that he is not invincible. It can be done. But it will not be easy, nor is it inevitable.
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