The Unspoken Weakness of Donald Trump
The 2016 election changed Democrat’s attitude when it comes to predicting and confidence. While we have always been the party of nervous nerds who want to think of clever ways to solve problems for the betterment of the country, the defeat of Hilary Clinton has scarred us. This has led to underplaying victories and hedging our bets in ways that might be detrimental to voter turnout, though every election since 2016 has proven this wrong. But with the South Carolina primary wrapped up, this trauma also seems to be influencing how we talk about the strengths and weaknesses of Donald Trump.
I am not sure why I have not seen more commentators highlighting just how weak Trump is in the Republican party. There have been four competitions so far for the GOP, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and now South Carolina. Other than Iowa, I have not seen anyone seriously think Trump would not win those states handily, and he did. There is no question that Trump has crushed each of his opponents in the primaries and is almost certainly going to be the Republican nominee for President. His campaign will say a win is a win is a win, and that may be true when it comes to touting a score card or convincing voters you have momentum. But in the broader context of the general election and the more narrow context of disappointed Republicans, there is a very different story to tell.
Trump won the Iowa primary with 51% of the vote. This is a victory, considering the runner up, Ron DeSantis, only received 21.3%. But this hardly seems to convey a message of a “united party” or the overall strength of another Donald Trump candidacy. This is a demonstration of the weakness of the other candidates and the relative strength of Trump. It is no secret all the other candidates spent the months leading up to Iowa not engaging with Trump in any meaningful way. At every opportunity, they hedged their bets, agreed with his policies, avoided his political troubles, and sided with him at every opportunity in a desperate attempt to capture some of his voting base, hoping to be “Trump without the drama”. The attainability of that goal aside, it is remarkable that every candidate was essentially helping Trump throughout Iowa, and he still only got 51%.
Yes, there were several candidates in Iowa and they clearly split the vote. But what about New Hampshire? That contest occurred eight days later, after Christie, DeSantis, and Ramaswamy all dropped out, and the latter two had endorsed Trump. While it may take time for voters to adjust or if mail-in ballots were already cast, New Hampshire would be a good indication of Trump’s strength and his consolidation of the vote. Nope. 54.3% was the number that led him to victory. Nikki Haley did about as well as most pundits thought, coming in a relatively close second with 43.2%. Is this a close race? No, but it is an astounding demonstration showing about half of the voters in the Republican primary would rather someone else be president than Donald Trump.
But what about Nevada? Didn’t Trump receive 99.1% of the vote? Yes, but that was in the Nevada caucus. In a strange series of events, Nevada held both a caucus and a primary two days prior, Trump was on the former and Haley on the latter. While this makes the results a little difficult to digest to the average voter, many of while expressed confusion on both days, it still shows what had happened in both Iowa and New Hampshire. About 140,000 people voted in those two contests. In the caucus, Trump received about 60,000 votes. In the primary, the category “None of These Candidates” received 50,000 while Trump’s name did not appear. While it is unclear what exactly these voters were expressing with that selection, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say they were voting for Trump. That would mean, generously, Trump received 78% of the vote. That is, once again, a clear and decisive victory for Trump. And yet, it also means 25% of the GOP voting base would prefer someone other than Trump in Nevada.
Lastly, we have South Carolina. Nikki Haley’s home state where she surprised the nation in 2010 by winning the governorship and served for 8 years. She was still expected to lose, but perform better than the past three races, and she did. With 95% of the votes in, Trump received 59.8% and Haley received 39.5%. Additionally, Trump won all but two counties in the 2016 South Carolina primary, in 2023 he won all but three. It is only Trump and Haley, there were no other real choices, and yet he could only cobble together about 60% of the enthusiastic Republican primary voters? The crowds that travel miles to watch his rallies, pay hundreds of dollars for a ridiculous pair of shoes, and look the other way when he is found guilty of sexual assault, fraud, and has 91 other felonies pending, only get him 60%? This is no longer about party politics or race-specific complexities and vote splitting, this is a clear pattern. I will do another piece on Trump’s odd choices of policy soon, but these votes demonstrate he is losing his approval he once had.
Trump is very likely going to win the primary. He is very likely going to win every single state on the path to the nomination. But the more important thing to remember is while the popular vote shows a large majority of the country prefers Democratic Presidents, both Trump and Biden won by about 100,000 votes across 6 states. In Wisconsin, Trump won in 2016 by 0.77%, in 2020 Biden won by 0.63%. In Michigan, Trump won in 2016 by 0.23%, Biden won in 2020 by 2.78%. In Pennsylvania, Trump won in 2016 by 0.72%, Biden won in 2020 by 1.17%. If Clinton would have flipped those three states she would have won, if Biden had lost them, Trump would have been nearing the end of his second term right now.
The primaries show Trump is still dominant within the Republican party, but nearly as much as he was. He is doubling down on his most unpopular policies and cozying up to very odd and unsavory characters (if you are on the same side as literal Nazis, you have done something wrong). Understandably, this has turned many Americans off, most of which are just right or left of center in terms of their politics. If the Democratic Party can do the proper legwork and get just 10-20% of Haley voters, which is an average of 38% of the party, Biden will easily win reelection in 2024. But it is also up to us to speak with everyone we can to make sure the choice has been made clear to our fellow Americans. Half of the mystique of Trump is his image of strength, but these primary elections have shown it is fading. Disrupting this narrative while also advising Republican voters on how to digest the candidates is key to this election and maintaining our democracy. Take Trump at his work when he says crazy things, and actually listen to Joe Biden.
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