WASHINGTON – For some, Donald Trump’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 is looking a lot like his victorious run in 2016 – and at the same time is totally unprecedented in the history of American politics.
As in the 2016 campaign cycle, Trump faces a flock of primary challengers who could split the opposition vote and enable the former businessman and television celebrity to win primaries – and delegates – with as little as 30% of the vote.
Meanwhile, the Trump of 2024 is not the Trump of 2016: He’s a former president who virtually controls the Republican Party; he also faces two criminal trials that could generate embarrassing details of his conduct and two other investigations are still pending.
“He’s the favorite,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres. “But there are a whole lot of events that will occur between now and the nomination.”
Many of those events, he added, “are unprecedented, which means they are impossible to predict.”
Still the frontrunner
As in 2016, Trump is the Republican frontrunner being chased by a long list of challengers.
This time around, Trump’s opponents include Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Tim Scott, Chris Christie, Doug Burgum, Vivek Ramaswamy, Asa Hutchinson, Larry Elder and Will Hurd.
The RealClearPolitics website average of recent polls puts Trump at 53% among Republican voters, well ahead of DeSantis at just under 21% and Pence at just more than 6%.
“I think Trump is stronger this year than he was in 2016,” said Chris Jackson, a pollster and senior vice president with the firm Ipsos. He noted that DeSantis, the governor of Florida, is running on policies very similar to Trump, a reflection of the fact that the anti-Trump vote among Republicans is smaller now than it was then.
Also like 2016, Trump is still running as an outsider fighting the “establishment,” never mind that he is a former president who runs much of the Republican Party and has acolytes in key positions in GOP organizations across the land.
In this election, Trump is running against a “deep state” that he claims, without evidence, is trying to derail his campaign “by using law enforcement” and indictments.
“They want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take away your freedom,” Trump told supporters Friday in Iowa.
2024 election polls
Trump has a 32-point lead in the GOP field, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls.
Here’s how the candidates are polling:
- Trump: 53%
- DeSantis: 20.9%
- Pence: 6.1%
- Haley: 3.6%
- Scott: 3.3%
- Christie: 2.5%
- Ramaswamy: 2.4%
- Hutchinson: 0.9%
- Elder: 0.7%
- Burgum: 0.1%
A USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll in June showed Trump with a 25-point lead, with 48% support to DeSantis’ 23%. All other candidates were in low single digits in that poll.
Pence and ‘New leadership’
Some of his opponents see a key difference from 2016: Trump has become his own establishment, with a record that challengers will try to exploit in order to flip the script from that previous election.
Pence, who served as Trump’s vice president but is now running against him, said during an Iowa stop last week that turning things around requires “new leadership in the Republican Party,” as well as the nation at large.
Pence is looking to break through in Iowa, which opens the nominating process next year with caucuses, in part by using his record on foreign policy.
A political action committee aligned with Pence put up an ad bashing Trump for being “an apologist for thugs and dictators,” references to the former president’s praise for Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
The top challenger, DeSantis, is planning a series of policy speeches designed to highlight differences with Trump on issues such as law enforcement and the economy. Last week, DeSantis challenged Trump’s record on border security
Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, is focusing his campaign on New Hampshire, site of the first Republican primary. He is also the biggest GOP critic of Trump’s legal problems, particularly his indictment over his handling of classified information.
Campaigning from courtrooms
One difference between 2024 and 2016, or any other presidential primary race: The frontrunner may have to campaign from courtrooms.
The former president is already bound for trial on a hush money case in New York as well as the classified documents case in Florida.
Trump has also warned supporters that more indictments could be coming. There are two pending investigations that deal with efforts to overturn his 2020 election to President Joe Biden, one a state probe based in Atlanta, Ga., and the other a federal review based in Washington, D.C.
‘Without precedent’
There are many predictions, but no one knows for sure how the trials will affect the 2024 election, regardless of whether Trump is convicted, acquitted, or left in limbo by hung juries.
“It’s totally without precedent,” Ayres said. “There’s no way to assess the impact.”
So far, it appears the indictments have hurt Trump with independent voters but strengthened him with the kinds of Republican voters who decide primaries.
Most voters of all stripes want the trials to take place before people vote, but that seems unlikely. Also: If Trump is convicted, he will likely appeal and that process could take years.
All the while, Trump will probably campaign against the indictments. Jackson said Trump has had success as an outsider candidate because he reflects so much Republican “anger at the establishment. Trump’s done that very effectively.”
The debate factor
As in 2016, Republicans are looking to debates to change the dynamic of the race.
Trump used early debates in 2015 to develop and solidify his status as the frontrunner, but he may not play this time around. The former president has repeatedly suggested he may skip the first debate, Aug. 23 in Milwaukee, because he is so far ahead in the polls
Other candidates see the debates as their best chance to catch up – if they can qualify.
Candidates must prove they have at least 40,000 unique donors, a fairly high bar for some of the lesser-known candidates.
Republican debaters must also pledge to support the eventual nominee, a tough ask for nominees who fear a Trump re-nomination. Trump has also balked at that idea, just as he did in 2016.
Another flashback: Trump did skip a 2016 debate held right before the Iowa caucuses, and opponents made much of his absence.
Trump also lost Iowa to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (and protested the result).
‘Going to get nastier’
Most opponents have avoided attacking Trump over the indictments, echoing another aspect of 2016: Challengers tended to attack each other rather than Trump, seeking to become the main alternative to him.
If they are to avoid a 2016-like result, opponents must take on the 2024 version of Trump over his record, his legal problems, his struggles with independent voters, and his chances in a general election against Biden.
“All of this means that at some point, this contest is going to get nastier than 2016,” said political scientist Lara Brown, author of “Jockeying for the American Presidency: The Political Opportunism of Aspirants.”
Brown said challengers have little choice but to aggressively confront Trump.
“At some point, they have to,” she said, “if they want to win.”
