It’s a one-candidate race — with two backups
Byron York
IT’S A ONE-CANDIDATE RACE — WITH TWO BACKUPS. Some Republicans have long wanted the GOP presidential field to narrow. They hoped the also-ran candidates would drop out. So far, there hasn’t been much of that. Instead, the field has effectively narrowed itself.
The bottom tier is out of it. Asa Hutchinson, Doug Burgum, Tim Scott, Chris Christie, and Vivek Ramaswamy — none of them ever touched 10% support nationally, and now they’re all under 5%, some even lower. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who dropped out over the weekend, was in that group, too.
That leaves just three candidates: Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Nikki Haley.
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Political reporters steeped in horse race analysis want to see the current contest as…a horse race. But it’s not. Back in early 2023, when Trump was in the lead but DeSantis was less than 15 points behind — back then, many commentators called it a two-candidate race. But now, with one candidate at least 45 points ahead of everyone else, what do you call it? A one-candidate race.
In the five most recent national polls included in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, Trump’s support was at 64%, 62%, 56%, 61%, and 58%. DeSantis’s position in those same five polls was 15%, 12%, 17%, 13%, and 12%. On average, DeSantis is 45.9 points behind Trump. In those same five most recent polls, Haley’s position was 8%, 7%, 8%, 7%, and 11%. On average, she is 51 points behind Trump.
It would be too generous to call that a three-candidate race. Trump’s lead is just too big. He is the whole race, all by himself.
Republican voters appear to accept that. Trump is in many ways campaigning like an incumbent president, not deigning to appear with the lowly challengers running against him. He has skipped the first two debates of the campaign and will skip next week’s third debate, in Miami. His opponents have slammed him for avoiding confrontation with them, but voters don’t seem to mind. A recent Des Moines Register poll found that 57% of all Iowa Republican caucusgoers said it didn’t matter whether Trump took part in any debate before the Jan. 15 caucuses. Among Trump supporters specifically, 81% said it doesn’t matter if Trump debates.
If a debate is a way for voters to get to know candidates and evaluate how they might perform in office — well, voters don’t think they need to do that with a man who was president for four years. That is unlikely to change in the next few months.
So what now? There’s going to be the Iowa caucuses and a New Hampshire primary and a South Carolina primary and so on. Maybe nothing will change and Trump will run away with them. In that case, he will be the next Republican presidential nominee.
On the other hand, Trump is facing an unprecedented number of criminal charges and lawsuits from Democratic lawyers and prosecutors around the country. Just this week, this newsletter discussed a lawsuit that aims to remove Trump from the 2024 ballot in Colorado, one of more than 20 such lawsuits nationwide. It is just part of a swarm of Democratic lawyers trying to bring Trump down. In many cases, it is blatantly unfair, and it will blow back on Democrats in the future, but right now, it is what it is.
From Tuesday’s newsletter: “It is a fact that Democrats are driving the multifront legal assault on Trump. They are prosecuting him in New York. They are suing him in New York. They are prosecuting him in Georgia. Under the ultimate authority of President Joe Biden, they are prosecuting him in federal courts in Washington and Florida. They are filing suit to bar him from the ballot in many states, including Colorado. When Trump says this sprawling effort is being driven by his political adversaries, he’s right.”
Given all that, if you were DeSantis or Haley, what would you do? On the one hand, the more Democratic lawyers and prosecutors go after Trump, the stronger his support grows among Republicans. DeSantis and Haley will increasingly have to denounce what’s being done to Trump even as they stand to benefit from it.
And then, what if one or more of those lawsuits and prosecutions succeed? What if, for example, Democrats manage to take Trump off the ballot in some, or all, states? To convict him of some number of felonies? Who knows what will happen — one possibility is prolonged chaos — but the Republican Party will need a presidential candidate. That’s where the two backups, DeSantis and Haley, might come in.
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