Former President Donald Trump is looking like a runaway freight train in the 2024 Republican presidential race, leaving his rivals praying for a derailment.
In this third bid for the White House, Mr. Trump is far ahead of his closest rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in national and early state polls and is running circles around the rest of the sprawling field. Even after losing reelection in 2020 and facing legal problems that threaten to put him behind bars for the rest of his life, he has a commanding lead.
The building air of inevitability has Mr. Trump’s rivals clinging with hope to the example of the early stages of the 2008 Democratic primary race. Hillary Clinton was considered a near shoo-in for the nomination in early July, but her lead in the polls evaporated with the startling rise of Sen. Barack Obama.
“Is it possible that [Trump’s] support could drop like Clinton’s did in 2008? Of course, but it wouldn’t be for any of the same reasons as that race,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “We have a one-term president with a cultlike following among a large portion of his partisan base attempting to stage a comeback in a crowded primary field.
“Looking backward for some clues on how this could play out is a pointless exercise,” Mr. Murray said in an email. “There is no lesson other candidates can draw from past presidential contests because they are in completely uncharted territory.”
Neil Levesque, director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College, also warned against comparing the Republican nomination battle to past races.
“Trump, for all intents and purposes, is an incumbent, and he is a popular incumbent within his own party. And in politics, if you want to throw out an incumbent, you have to create a reason why voters will do that,” Mr. Levesque said. “I don’t think anyone has made a compelling reason as to why they won’t choose the incumbent. It seems that time is the only variable that political strategists come up with as a reason why Trump wouldn’t be the nominee.”
Roughly seven months before the Iowa caucuses, Mr. DeSantis is viewed as Mr. Trump’s top rival. Yet he has struggled to convince voters that his legislative and electoral successes make him the Republican Party’s strongest candidate.
History suggests things could change.
At this point in the 2008 Republican presidential race, former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani held a 26.3% to 18.8% lead over former Sen. Fred Thompson. Sen. John McCain, the eventual nominee, was running third at 16.7%.
In the 2016 nomination campaign, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, at 15%, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, at 10.6%, were battling it out for the top spot coming out of the Fourth of July holiday in 2015.
Mr. Trump was starting to rise but still running toward the back of the pack with 6% support.
In 2008, Mr. Obama overcame Mrs. Cinton’s 37.3% to 23% edge in the polls to pull off a stunning defeat of the former first lady in the Democratic race.
The clock is now ticking on the back-of-the-pack 2024 Republican contenders to break through ahead of the party’s first presidential debate, set for Aug. 23 in Milwaukee. The Republican National Committee requires candidates to have at least 40,000 unique donors and garner at least 1% in qualifying polls after July 1.
Mr. Trump is not making the task easy.
He is the preferred candidate of more than half of Republicans in national polls and more than 40% of Republican voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, according to the Real Clear Politics average of recent polls.
Mr. DeSantis and the rest of the field — including former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and former Ambassador Nikki Haley — are struggling to peel away loyal Trump supporters and fighting over the scraps.
Mr. Trump could box out struggling candidates from picking up the polling support they need to get onto the debate stage. Adding insult to injury, he has threatened to skip the first debate.
“Between sexual allegations, sexual assault charges, and other legal issues for Trump, nothing [has] significantly moved the numbers in any profound way,” said David Paleogois, director of the Suffolk University poll. “Trump is the 800-pound gorilla in the Republican primary. He has taken a lot of shots and he is still beating his chest in the forest.”
Indeed, Mr. Trump gained ground after his April indictment in New York City on charges of trying to cover up hush-money payments to conceal alleged extramarital affairs and in June after he was indicted on federal charges of mishandling classified documents. The former president has denied any wrongdoing.
A Manhattan jury in May found Mr. Trump liable in a civil case for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll. The author and magazine advice columnist accused Mr. Trump of raping her in a department store in the 1990s. He was ordered to pay $5 million.
“There could be others coming, like for the perfect phone call,” Mr. Trump said during a recent stop in New Hampshire in reference to alleged interference in the 2020 election in Georgia. He also is under investigation over incitement of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. “The numbers will keep going [up], and I don’t think that has ever happened before.”
“This is a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time,” he said.
Mr. Trump’s social media feed has been littered with polls showing him running well ahead of the other Republican contenders and defeating President Biden, as well as posts claiming Mr. DeSantis and his rivals are wasting their time and should drop out of the race.
Still, the lingering fear among some Republicans is that Mr. Trump will cruise to victory in the party nominating contest only to lose a second time to Mr. Biden.
An NBC poll released last week showed Mr. Trump with a 51% to 22% lead over Mr. DeSantis among Republican primary voters but trailing Mr. Biden by 49% to 45% among all registered voters.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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