Earlier this week, the Never-Trump publication The Bulwark released a poll showing that a majority of the Republican Party is ready to put the Trump legacy behind them. Unfortunately for them, a solid minority is more loyal to the grifter and former president than to the GOP. According to the poll memo, Trump retains “a lock on approximately 30 percent of likely Republican primary and caucus voters nationally.”
On the bright side, the poll showed that Trump would lose the Republican primary to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, even in a multi-candidate field. On the down side, twenty-eight percent of Republicans would vote for Trump over DeSantis in the general election if Trump ran as an independent. In other words, about 30% of the Republican Party are Trump cultists, not GOP regulars.
For me, the bigger question is how many of those 28% would stay home in a general election if Trump weren’t on the ballot at all. In 2016, we saw a surge in Republican voters like we haven’t seen in past presidential elections. They came back when Trump was on the ballot in 2020. What they do in 2024 could determine the outcome of the next presidential election, especially in states like North Carolina where top of the ticket races are determined by a handful of votes.
In 2016 in North Carolina, 168,000 white Republican and unaffiliated voters showed up at the polls who did not vote in the 2012 election. They gave Trump a solid edge even as Roy Cooper narrowly defeated Pat McCrory. GOP turnout in the state that year was 75% compared to 68% for Democrats. In 2020, the GOP turnout increased to an impressive 81% while Democratic turnout jumped to 75%. Many of those Republican voters seem to have showed up only for Trump since both Roy Cooper and Josh Stein won re-election.
How many of those 168,000 Trumpists who showed up back in 2016 will disappear if the GOP dumps Trump? They clearly aren’t loyal to the GOP. Maybe they’ll latch onto a Trump imitator like Mark Robinson. Outrage and victimhood, not policies or values, seem to be the drivers of these voters. DeSantis has played the game pretty well, pushing divisive culture war issues like bashing the LGBT+ community and diminishing the African American experience in the country. But if he defeats Trump in a primary and the former president comes after him, will the cultist support him? I doubt it.
I suspect the GOP is going to pay a price in national elections for a long time because of their embrace of the conman from New York. They sacrificed their conservative values in exchange for the power and influence of a would-be authoritarian strongman. Now, the moderate, center-right voters who historically supported Republicans are wary of the party and have totally rejected Trumpism, if 2022 is any indication. GOP candidates are put in the bind of embracing Trump and losing the swing voters or rejecting Trump and alienating the base voters more loyal the him than the party. They’ve dug themselves a deep hole.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
I’m praying for Trump to start a Trump political party and attract the likes of MGT and Lauren Boboo up and down ballots from county to national races.
It’s tiresome to see the lumbering orange ape man waving his fascist clenched fist. There are stores that do nothing but sell Trumpist trash. I saw one in Myrtle Beach and wanted to stop and ask if they sold Trump toilet paper.
Well said. Trump is a major pain in the — for the Republican Party. If he were to go away, never to be heard from again, the party would believe a miracle has occurred. However, Republicans are stuck with him. Moreover, he will cost them money and votes to deal with his propensity to be that hobo living in a dilapidated public park.
They came out and swamped DEMS in Lee County during the 2022 midterms. They have latched onto cultural issues like CRT and LGBTQ being taught in the classrooms. A large evangelical type church recruited a woman with a last name not common for the area to run for County Commission and she beat a well know life long Lee County Citizen that was not considered a liberal. I hope you are right and the Trump cult followers do not come out if he isn’t on the ticket but I wouldn’t count on it.
The same may be the case for Burke County. So many Republicans I know don’t like Trump, but they have been trained since birth to hate Democrats. They will vote for an Independent or not vote at all, rather than for a Democrat.