Poll: DeSantis pulls even with Trump in New Hampshire
What a difference a year makes
A year ago, a poll by the University of New Hampshire found that 47 percent of likely Republican voters in the Granite State considered Donald Trump their first choice to be the GOP nominee for president. Ron DeSantis was the first choice of only 19 percent.
But now a poll by the same group finds DeSantis with 39 percent support. Trump is at 37 percent. (Mike Pence and Nikki Haley are next with 9 percent and 6 percent, respectively.)
DeSantis’ lead is not statistically significant, so according to the poll he’s tied with the former president. Moreover, the sample size of 318 is awfully small.
Nonetheless, the shift from a year ago seems remarkable. Suppose that, this poll notwithstanding, Trump remains 10 points more popular than DeSantis in New Hampshire. He has still lost a lot of ground.
The same poll projects DeSantis running a better race in New Hampshire against Joe Biden than Trump runs. According to the survey, Biden and DeSantis are statistically tied at 47 percent for the president and 46 percent for the Florida governor. Trump, by contrast, trails Biden 43-50 — essentially the same margin by which Biden carried New Hampshire in 2020. (For what it’s worth, I believe Trump would run better in that state than he did last time.)
If polls in other states and nationwide were to find DeSantis a stronger 2024 candidate than Trump, this would be a big setback for the former president. Republicans are desperate to reclaim the White House. Electability calculations will almost certainly be a factor in choosing a nominee.
Why is Trump losing so much ground? I think the biggest reason is that Republican voters are sick of hearing him talk about the 2020 election. Most of them probably believe there was a lot of fraudulent voting. Many may believe it cost Trump the election. But I suspect that the vast majority of Republicans would prefer to focus on the future, not the past.
But Trump won’t do it. He doesn’t seem capable of moving on.
Why? Because he’s psychologically incapable of accepting the idea that he lost.
In Trump’s universe, a loser is the lowest form of existence. Therefore, he cannot have lost the 2000 election. He can only have won it, and done so decisively. (That’s why I disagree with claims made during the January 6 committee hearings that Trump knew he lost. Trump’s belief system precludes such knowledge.)
It can be argued, however, that there’s a method to Trump’s madness. At the core of Trump’s appeal is the notion that he’s the ultimate winner. If his most ardent followers come to believe that Trump really lost the 2020 election, this might shatter the mystique.
Therefore, Trump seems trapped in a dilemma. If he admits he lost, he risks losing his core followers. If he keeps insisting he won, he risks alienating everyone else.
The way out of the dilemma would be simply to stop talking about the 2020 race. But Trump’s personality seems to preclude this sensible option.
Thus, the door may be opening for a more stable, less tarnished candidate. Right now, it looks like that candidate is Ron DeSantis.
Good point about clearing the field, Jim. And that's another interesting thing about the New Hampshire poll -- no one other than Trump and DeSantis showed much support.
It's still early, but I don't Mike Pence or Nikki Haley -- the next two in the poll -- getting much traction. Maybe someone else will emerge, but this may turn out to be essentially a two person race.
In the most pragmatic view, DeSantis would be able to talk about Biden's age and really lay the wood to him. I suppose the cohort is getting smaller that remembers Reagan's second term, but it got ugly. As much as I like Trump's policies and all the wonderful things he did for all the ordinary working people of this country, I am deathly afraid of having a rerun of Reagan's second term.