61% of GOP primary voters back Donald Trump in recent poll.

 

Donald Trump at a NRA event. The Hill/AP.

61% of GOP primary voters back Donald Trump in a recent Morning Consult poll. The Hill. Trump leads his most formidable primary opponent, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, by a whopping 43 points, with DeSantis only getting 18 % of the vote. Only one other candidate cracked the 5% mark with former Vice President Mike Pence getting 6% of the vote. Pence, like DeSantis, has not officially entered the race yet. Two candidates that have, former governor Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy earned 4% each. 

The Morning Consult poll can be found here. 

My Comment:

The results of this poll are not at all surprising. Trump is a popular former president who essentially took over the Republican Party and remade it in his image. He has legions of loyal fans and though many people hate him, the ones that love him really love him. Plus he is seen as an underdog and a victim of an out of control government that persecutes people for their political beliefs and for standing up against the system. You would have to have an extremely compelling reason to not support him in 2024 if you are a Republican voter, and, so far, that hasn't happened. 

With the poll numbers it is a wonder why Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appears ready to enter the race. I won't relitigate that post here much, but I will say that I just don't see a lane for him. He's too much like Donald Trump for the anti-Trump wing of the party and the pro-Trump part of the party isn't going to abandon Trump for DeSantis. And, worst of all, DeSantis would have been a shoe-in for 2028 if he had just shown a little patience. 

As for the other candidates, I also don't see much of a path for them. Mike Pence could have been that guy but most Republicans' see him as a traitor or worse for certifying the 2020 election, in a moment when the vast majority of his party would have liked to see him fight. That greatly limits the potential for Pence reaching double digits, plus the comparative strength between him and DeSantis. 

Four other credible candidates were mentioned (along with Texas Governor Gregg Abbott who I don't think will run). Nikki Haley most likely doesn't have a chance and she was hurt by fellow South Carolina resident, Senator Tim Scott joining the race. Neither of them seem like a threat to Trump. And though Vivek Ramaswamy is an interesting person, he strikes me as the GOP's version of Andrew Yang this election cycle. And Asa Hutchinson? Nobody even knows who he is, and the ones that do don't like him for attacking Donald Trump. 

Hilariously, Liz Cheney was mentioned in the poll as well, getting a whopping 2%, well within the poll's confidence interval. No serious Republican wants Cheney to run, let alone win, she's persona non grata in the Republican party and she was kicked out of office quite convincingly. 

Is there any way that Trump isn't the GOP candidate in 2024? There are a couple of ways, none of them good. The first and most likely, sadly enough, is some kind of health issue or even Trump passing away. Trump is not a young man anymore and though he seems healthy and sharp, that could change very quickly for a man of 76. Even more frightening, someone could attack him physically, which has been known to happen to popular American election candidates. 

Without that it would require some kind of miracle for Trump to not be the candidate. Trump has survived everything the mainstream media, the government and even members of his own party have thrown at him since 2015. I don't see how Ron DeSantis and the others could somehow take Trump down when so many others have failed miserably. Even the old career ender, getting caught in bed with a dead woman or a live boy, might not take Trump down, though I don't believe for a second Trump would do something that wrong or stupid. 

Can Trump beat Biden? Well, as far as I am concerned he did once already, it was only the Coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent changes in election law with zero time to prepare that allowed Biden to take office, even ignoring the fairly obvious signs of election fraud. Biden's less popular then ever and it's almost impossible to argue that he's doing a better job than Trump, so if the GOP can make any progress at all at adapting to the new election environment I think he's a lock. But given that Republicans have made a habit of letting Democrats roll over them...