OPINION:
Recently, there has been a rash of informative polling focused on the 2024 presidential campaign.
Let’s look at the Democratic side first. A few days ago, Emerson College offered up survey results that indicated that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — whose campaign is not even supported by his own family — currently has about 1 in 5 registered Democratic voters ready to vote for him to be the party’s presidential nominee.
In that same survey, almost 1 in 10 likely Democratic primary voters indicated that they are prepared to vote for Marianne Williamson, whose 2020 campaign was focused (if we can use that word) on crystals and other New Age nonsense.
A survey conducted by Fox News at approximately the same time had similar results.
It seems unlikely that Democratic voters would choose either Mr. Kennedy or Ms. Williamson as standard-bearers. In fact, these survey results should be viewed as what they are — a mild protest, probably by progressives, over the impending coronation of an incumbent widely viewed, even within his own party, as faded and fading. It is no accident that various surveys have indicated that about two-thirds of registered voters would prefer an alternative candidate to the president.
On the other side, things are no less odd.
Despite the flurry of data that indicates Republican primary voters prefer President Trump over pretty much everyone else running, survey results that focus on who might be the stronger Republican candidate against President Biden suggest that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would do better.
For example, Mr. Trump’s own polling team (Fabrizio Lee) recently released the results of a survey they did for the Wall Street Journal. That survey indicated that Mr. DeSantis would defeat Mr. Biden nationally by 3 percentage points while Mr. Trump would lose nationally by 3 percentage points — the same margin by which he lost in 2020.
With respect to swing states, the story has the same feel. In polling done by Public Opinion Strategies, Mr. Trump trails Mr. Biden in Arizona by 1 percentage point and in Pennsylvania by 4 points. At the same time, Mr. DeSantis leads Mr. Biden in Arizona by 6 points and in Pennsylvania by 3 points. In Nevada, Mr. DeSantis leads Mr. Biden by 3 points. Mr. Trump trails him by 1 point.
In Iowa, Mr. Trump holds a 6-point lead in Iowa, according to a survey done by Cygnal. For comparative purposes, however, Mr. DeSantis leads Mr. Biden by 10 points in Iowa in that same survey.
Taken together, the current polling indicates that if Mr. Trump were the nominee, Mr. Biden would win reelection with 319 Electoral College votes. Current polling also indicates that Mr. DeSantis would receive at least 286 electoral votes (296 if he carries Wisconsin). Keep in mind that a candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win.
It is also important to remember that we are very early in the cycle, and, despite appearances, the campaign has not yet started in earnest. Conclusions about the appeal or durability of candidates are aggressively premature. Within living memory, Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine, Texas Gov. John Connally, Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush were all considered certain winners at this point in the cycle. Caution is always in order.
That said, it is probably not a good sign that Mr. Trump, despite the numerous failings of the Biden administration, is not doing better in head-to-head contests with Mr. Biden, either nationally or in swing states. If 2024 looks like 2020 — and that is what the survey data suggests it will look like if Mr. Trump is the Republican nominee — the Republicans will not win the presidency.
• Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, co-hosts “The Unregulated Podcast.” He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House.
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