For GOP, Trump’s polling trajectory is unsafe at any speed
By Chris Satullo
If all goes well, what might Donald Trump have in common with Ralph Nader?
This: He’ll have cost a major party a presidential election it could have won if he had not insisted on a narcissistic, pointless bid.
That’s one takeaway, among many, from a fascinating new poll conducted by North Star Opinion Research for The Bulwark.com, that peerless redoubt of center-right Never Trumpism. This poll of likely Republican voters found that a robust 28 percent said they’d vote for Trump even if he ran as an independent after losing out in the Republican primaries.
As Charlie Sykes, founder of The Bulwark, put it in his newsletter this week: “Despite clear evidence of Trump Fatigue, the ‘Always Trump’ faction of the GOP will follow Trump to the gates of Hell.”
That situation gives rise to at least three pertinent questions:
1) Could Trump really lose in the Republican primaries?
2a) If he did, would he mount an insurgent, independent candidacy? (Question 2b: Would he urge his supporters to storm the house of Ronna McDaniel, Republican National Committee chairwoman, to force her to award him the nomination?)
3) If Point 1 and Point 2a did come to pass, how many of those Always Trump voters would really abandon the Republican nominee and pull the lever for their orange-haired idol?
First, let’s dig deeper on Point 1. The Bulwark poll, and others, show Trump in a primary dogfight with DeSantis, while most of the other possible GOP candidates whose names get bandied about lag badly in name recognition and voter fervor.
Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark and its public opinion expert, summed up the numbers for her readers:
- In a head-to-head match, DeSantis leads Trump 52 percent to 30 percent, with 15 percent undecided and 3 percent saying they would not vote if those were the only two options.
- With DeSantis, Trump, and “another candidate,” DeSantis got 44 percent, Trump got 28 percent, and the generic “another candidate” got 10 percent, with 17 percent undecided.
- In a 10-candidate field, DeSantis got 39 percent, Trump 28 percent, Mike Pence 9 percent, Nikki Haley and Liz Cheney 4 percent each, and five other candidates registered at 1 percent. In this scenario, 13 percent of the respondents were undecided.
So, yeah, Trump could lose. For real.
But stifle that profound sigh of relief. He also could win. Always Trumpers are zealous – thus likely to flock to primary polling places. Trump remains quite strong in the early states that launched him into plausibility in 2016: Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. And the more Republican politicians who let their egos push them into doomed bids, the better the chance that a splintered field, combined with Trump’s maniacal core, will give him the early wins he’d need to mollify disgusted big-money donors and fend off DeSantis.
What’s clear from the poll – and to anyone who’s been watching carefully since Jan. 6 – is that the GOP really consists of two parties mashed together for ballot convenience. One chunk consists of the people whose core loyalty is to the Republican brand; the other is the folks whose fiery love is reserved for the Marquis of Mar-a-Lago. The Bulwark survey clocked that breakdown this way: 26 percent support Trump more than the party; 63 percent back the GOP more than Trump; and 12 percent claim even-steven love for the party and the Gaslighter-in-Chief.
So, on to Question 2: Would a losing Trump really stomp off and sink the GOP’s presidential chances via an independent campaign that would be arithmetically doomed from the get-go?
Do you doubt it? What could be more petulantly, narcissistically on brand for Donald than that?
Still dubious? Then repeat after me the famous phrase supposedly uttered by Deep Throat in that dark D.C. garage so very long ago: Follow the money.
A third-party campaign in fall 2024 would be a spectacular occasion for grift, for one last fund-raising gusher from Trump’s fans, whose loyalty is topped only by their gullibility. Would the man who brought you the Election Defense Fund, the Official Impeachment Defense Fund and Trump University be able to resist the temptation to pick his loyalists’ pockets one last time?
No more than I’m able to resist a Pepperidge Farm Santa Cruz cookie.
So on to Question 3: Could such as independent Trump campaign hand the White House back to the Democrats again?
Once the poll came out, Ross Douthat of The New York Times raced to his Twitter feed to calm fluttering GOP hearts: “Trump is unlikely to run third party and 28 percent of the GOP primary base isn’t actually going to vote for a spoiler if it’s DeSantis v. Biden.”
(Of course, back in the day Douthat also scoffed at the notion that Trump would push Stop the Steal to the point of violence and sedition.)
And aren’t Times columnists supposed to be better at math? It would not require that full contingent of MAGA voters wandering off the GOP reservation to seal a Democratic victory in 2024.
Fire up your smartphone calculators, class: A 2021 Gallup poll found that 41 percent of the electorate leans or tilts Republican (with their numbers swelled in recent years by the Trump fans who didn’t used to vote regularly). So, if 28 percent of those folks bolted to cheer a maverick Trump run, that would equal about 11.5 percent of likely voters. Pretty scary for the GOP nominee, no?
Heck, to make it more interesting, let’s agree with Ross that, in the end, not all present-day Trumpers would bolt. Let’s say that only 1 in 4 would. (Think that’s still too high? Remember, these folks are Labrador-loyal; they build shrines in their yards, organize boat parades and wear red baseball caps to church.)
That rate of defection would cost the Republican nominee roughly 2.9 percent of the votes Trump got in the razor-close 2016 election – and in the much-less-close (but still nerve-wracking-thanks-to-the-stupid-Electoral College) 2020 one. That’s easily more than twice the margin of victory for Trump in 2016’s crucial swing states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Same for Biden’s keys to easy Electoral College triumph in 2020: Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona.
And, what do you know, in 2000, Ralph Nader’s ridiculous, self-righteous presidential bid earned…wait for it…2.74 percent of the vote. Of those who backed Nader, nearly 100,000 came from decisive Florida, costing Al Gore the election and delivering unto us 9/11, the Iraq War, Abu Ghraib and waterboarding, “You’re doing a great job, Brownie,” and ISIS.
And let’s not leave out the Green Party’s Jill Stein. Her 1 percent in 2016 wasn’t as clearly decisive as Nader’s vote share in 2000. Still, if Hillary Clinton had gotten just half of Stein’s voters to switch to her in the three vital swing states, Donald Trump would never have had an inauguration crowd to lie about.
So to pretend that Donald Trump doesn’t hold absolute power to wreck the GOP in 2024 is nonsense.
It’s the main reason most Republican politicians will never say the quiet thing out loud: For all their public bowing and kowtowing to the man, deep down they hate his guts and pray nightly to the Almighty that POTUS #45 will be summoned to his eternal reckoning long before the ball drops in Times Square to usher in 2024.
By contrast, for me, this Bulwark poll is almost – almost, but not quite – enough to make me light a candle and pray for 45’s continued good cardiac health.
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Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia