Since my last post, one week ago, the tone of commentary on Ron DeSantis has become more negative--there have been comparisons to also-rans like Scott Walker and Ted Cruz. A piece in the New York Times by Sam Adler-Bell suggests that the race is falling into the same pattern as 2016. DeSantis "polls considerably higher than Mr. Trump with wealthy, college-educated, city- and suburb-dwelling Republicans. Mr. Trump, meanwhile, retains his grip on blue-collar, less educated and rural conservatives. For the G.O.P., the primary fight has begun to tell an all-too-familiar story: It’s the elites vs. the rabble."
A recent Quinnipiac University poll of likely Republican primary voters finds 40% for Trump, 36% for DeSantis, with Nikki Haley and Mike Pence in a tie for third place, with 6% each. Education and income do make a difference: Trump leads DeSantis 41-23% among white people without a college degree and trails (38-43% among whites with a college degree). There's a similarly large split by income. (They don't report breakdowns by urban/suburban/rural residence, but that's pretty dubious as a measure of "elite" status.) What about other factors? Trump leads by 48-28% among people aged under 45, and trails 40-35% among people aged 45 and up. He leads among women (40%-32%) and has a smaller lead (40-39%) among men. Trump is slightly behind among whites (36-38%) and has a substantial lead (56-27%) among what Quinnipiac calls "people of color" (probably mostly Latino).
The survey also asks about second choice: DeSantis is first with 31%, followed by Trump with 20%, Pence with 17%, and Nikki Haley with 9%. Relative to Haley, Pence does better among people with lower incomes, less educated people, younger people, women, and "people of color." Some of the differences are small, and many of them could reasonably be attributed to chance. However, there's a pattern that applies to both the Trump/DeSantis and Pence/Haley choices: the more familiar name does better among groups that generally pay less attention to politics. This provides an alternative explanation of the education and income differences in Trump/DeSantis support--people with less education and lower incomes generally pay less attention to politics, and people who pay less attention to politics tend to go with the candidate that they've heard of. These explanations aren't mutually exclusive--Trump probably retains some "populist" appeal. But some of his strength, especially his strength among "working class" voters, at this point is just because of familiarity.
In my view, a major reason that Trump won in 2016 is that other candidates focused on attacking each other, and didn't really go after Trump until it was too late. Ironically, this could happen again in 2024 for different reasons--his opponents could interpret his early strength as positive appeal, be reluctant to antagonize his voters, and all leave the job of attacking Trump to someone else.
Interesting observations. But at this point it seems early to draw conclusions. Anecdotally I feel like the lauded early frontrunners usually lose and at this point that would include both Trump and DeSantis; and that the winner doesn't usually appear on the scene (not including incumbents) until less than a year before elections. Would be interesting to know if that's true.
ReplyDeleteIt's really hard to imagine either of these two individuals being a leading candidate for president sixteen months from now. DeSantis is is appropriately cast in his battle against Disney, becoming a Looney Tunes a Foghorn Leghorn character; Trump is more reminiscent of that dude from SNL that always made stuff up: "yea...yeah! That's it! That's the ticket! Election fraud! Yeah! That's it!" His MAGA line still has resonance but his greaseball characteristics are just to blatant to ignore.