Despite the media crowing about Trump’s big win in Iowa and a potential knockout blow in New Hampshire tomorrow, consider this:
1) Only 14% of Republicans, comprising just 3% of the entire population in Iowa voted in the caucuses last week. For a state trending so Republican these days, that’s not exactly impressive - even with the subzero winter temperature. Trump did ask his supporters to come out and vote for him, even if it kills them. Not many did.
2) While Trump’s 51% sounds impressive, fully 49% of voters rejected him, even though they know the candidates they supported will not win.
3) The day after the caucuses Democrats won yet another special election. This time in a district in Florida that voted for the Republican incumbent by double-digits in 2022 and for DeSantis for governor. The Democratic candidate won almost 2/3 of independent voters in that race.
4) Democrats have been consistently overperforming in special and off-year elections since 2020. These are real elections, with (usually) binary choices that have meaningful outcomes.
5) Despite just about every talking head out there claiming tomorrow’s NH primary will be the knockout blow for Trump, Nikki Haley - who will never be the GOP nominee - appears likely to win 35% of the vote.
6) Trump has, believe it or not, been keeping a low profile - at least as far as most voters are concerned. Musk let him back on Twitter, but he curiously avoids posting there. Only the devoted and political junkies watch clips from his rallies. He has avoided all of the GOP debates - which some understandably think is because he’s so far ahead. But maybe it’s because he doesn’t want people to see him as a candidate just yet. That begs the question, why not?
7) He is clearly unwell, mentally, emotionally, and physically. It is apparent from watching him speak. When voters really start to tune to the election (which won’t be for months most likely), they are likely going to be shocked by what they see - and in comparison to Biden, he will be the one who seems like the guy too old to be president.
8) There is some reason to believe in the polling and anecdotal data that a possibly-significant portion of the electorate simply does not believe he is really running or that he will be the nominee. It’s possible that portion believe the same of Biden, by the way, so that may not mean much in the end.
9) If somehow, Haley costs Trump a majority of votes in NH, the narrative could turn against Trump. At the very least, South Carolina will become important. Haley has become critical of Trump’s well-being since he confused her with Nancy Pelosi a few days ago. However, this is a line of attack all of the GOP candidates should have taken against Trump months ago.
10) The polling does not show him beating Biden consistently. In fact, recent polling from two A-rated pollsters has Biden leading in both multi-candidate and two-candidate contests.1 Neither candidate is polling much higher than the mid-40s in most polls — and in some cases only in the 30s. This means that what the polling is really telling us right now is that a lot of people are not even paying attention to race yet or they don’t like the choices and since the election is months away, they don’t have to make a decision right now.
Trump may be in a lot more trouble than folks think right now. And I haven’t even mentioned his four criminal and two civil trials that threaten to find him bankrupt and in jail when all is done.
A number of presidential polls out there right now are from Republican-aligned pollsters and political consultants - the kind that created so much chaos leading up to the 2020 election with suspicious results. However, two excellent pollsters (A-ratings from FiveThirtyEight) - Marist College and Siena College - have recent polls that were both in the field during the same days last week. These polls show us that if there is a clear leader right now, it is Biden. Marist has Biden beating Trump 44-41 in a multi-candidate race and 52-45 in a two-candidate race. Sienna has Biden winning 41-32 in a multi-candidate race and 46-37 in a two-candidate race.