A number that should terrify Republicans...
....But won't.
Consider this chart from the new AP-NORC national poll:
Zero in on those Trump numbers.
A majority — 53% — said they will DEFINITELY not support Donald Trump for president if he is the party’s nominee. Another 11% said they would “probably” not support him.
Add it up and you get almost two thirds of the general electorate saying they aren’t likely to vote for Trump next fall.
Which seems bad! Like really bad!
Here’s conservative columnist Marc Thiessen’s take on the numbers:
Which I don’t think is much of an exaggeration. Because, consider two simple things we know:
Donald Trump is the overwhelming favorite to be the Republican presidential nominee
A MAJORITY of general election voters say they would never consider supporting him.
Which, well, yeah.
This would seem to be the sort of thing that would be concerning for Republicans, right? If the ultimate goal is winning the White House then nominating someone who a majority of the public says they won’t vote for seems like a problem.
Except that Republican primary voters appear to be living in an entirely separate world from the general electorate.
Consider these numbers — among Republicans — from that same AP-NORC poll:
Trump’s favorable rating is 70%
Two thirds (63%) want Trump to run for reelection
Three quarters (74%) say they will support him if he is the Republican nominee in the general election.
HUH?
There are only three — as far as I can see — potential explanations that can be drawn from this data.
Republicans believe polling is fatally flawed as it relates to Trump. No one thought he could win in 2016 and look what happened! Polling just doesn’t get Trump so it’s best to ignore it and what it says. Or something.
Stuff changes. As in, yeah, maybe a majority of Americans say they will NEVER for Trump today but they will change their minds between now and next November. It’s never clear to me WHAT will change their minds though.
I think of this as the “yada yada theory” of the election. Step one: A majority of voters say they will never support Trump. Step two: yada yada, yada Step three: He wins in November 2024. (You skipped the best part!)
Republicans don’t care — really — about winning the general election. There’s some poll data to support this idea — with Republican generally preferring a candidate who agrees with them on issues rather than a candidate who is more electable. As in they would rather have a pyrrhic victory than a real one. (Pyrrhic victories have long been the stock and trade of Democrats.)
I guess there is a 4th-ish option that is sort of the corollary to #2: Republicans believe Trump is electable in a general election and therefore, uh, he is. In a New York Times poll conducted earlier this summer, 58% of Republicans said that Trump had a better chance of beating Joe Biden while just 28% said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did. It’s not clear what that electability belief is based on, of course.
What seems to be happening here is that Republicans and the people they interact with like and support Trump. And, therefore, they assume that Trump is the kind of candidate who can win a general election. Because everyone they know supports him.
But, the data is the data. And this AP-NORC poll is far from the first one to suggest that Trump as the general election nominee would have major problems winning a rematch against Joe Biden. (Worth noting: The AP poll was in the field BEFORE Trump’s 4th indictment, which came late Monday night.)
I have written before — and continue to believe — that Donald Trump is the weakest of all of the candidates Republicans could put forward against Biden.
Even DeSantis, who has run a deeply disappointing campaign to date, would be able to drive a generational contrast against Biden — and would likely to be able to turn the race into a straight referendum on the current occupant of the White House. (That is literally impossible to imagine if Trump is the nominee.)
And yet and yet and yet — Republicans seem to have NO qualms about renominating him.
I will admit I don’t totally get it. But here we are.
The thought that Donald Trump could become president again is terrifying, and I take no comfort from polls such as this. I do take comfort from the fact that young people and independents seem as appalled by the thought of another presidency as I.
I do also agree of practically all the candidates, he is the most likely to be defeated by a Biden-Harris ticket on the Democratic side. And contrary to a majority of Americans, I feel President Biden has earned my support for a second term; and should a disaster happen, and Joe Biden were to die in office, America can do a lot worse than having its first African American female president be Kamala Harris.
It seems like a segment of our population is ride or die with Trump. I don't know if they are thinking big picture.