Donald Trump's Primary Issues Aren't Going Away
May 22nd, 2024
Throughout this whole primary season, the cable news talking heads have said nothing but how Biden is in danger of losing his base, how Uncommitted would sink him in November, and of Trump’s dominance in the GOP primary. There’s just one problem with that: Biden has been winning by greater margins in the Democratic primaries more often than Trump is winning by those margins Republican ones. Biden, I would posit, has the better grasp on his party than Trump does on his own.
Last night, Kentucky and Oregon held their presidential preference primaries and while he was uncontested in Oregon, Trump won less than 85% of the vote in Kentucky. This marks just the sixth time that Trump has won 100% of the vote, OR had a primary/caucus cancelled to give him the delegates, OR had no opponents on the primary ballot or caucus (Delaware, Missouri, American Samoa, Guam, and Wyoming). Trump has eclipsed 85% of the vote only 9 times: Nevada’s caucus (there was an advisory primary as well that awarded no delegates), Michigan, Alaska, Hawaii, Mississippi, Louisiana, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and West Virginia.
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As of Super Tuesday, Trump had won by a greater margin in Oklahoma and Nevada. Throughout this presidential primary season, we’ve seen Trump’s support consistently fall in suburban areas compared to 2016 and 2020-something that should be seen as a five alarm fire in the MAGA world.
Things haven’t improved too much for Trump. Outside of cancelled primaries or caucuses, he is substantially underperforming what nearly every political observer, myself included, expected. A since-withdrawn Nikki Haley is proving to be a much more painful and dangerous rival than Uncommitted is for Biden.
Primary results by state, candidate percent, and margin. Note: While an effort was made put primary/caucus dates in order, given the different DNC and RNC schedules, that proved to be impossible. Please forgive the out-of-order dates.
The picture isn’t exactly rosy for Biden: the Gaza War, lagging concerns about the state of the economy, concerns about his age, and other issues are things he has to address. However, I would much rather be in Biden’s camp than Trump’s: a major trial, lack of logistics, a major and persistent protest vote, and flawed down-ballot candidates cannot be good news for him.
What does this mean for November? That’s a good question. Nearly every candidate has dealt with a primary challenger at some point, even incumbents, but outside of the Kennedy/Carter Democratic Primary in 1980, I cannot think of one this serious. Even Pat Buchanan’s primary of George H.W. Bush in 1992 was more of an annoyance than anything else.
This is going to be an issue for Trump. He will have to win states he lost in 2020 but won in 2016, but many of those voters seem to have lost patience with him and are organizing protest votes against him. There isn’t much history to go off of, but there’s a chance this is the canary in the coal mine.
This election feels unique in several obvious, overdiscussed ways, but I think one of the biggest is how badly the state needs it to feel like a contest in order to continue feeding the machine. I seriously hope this comment doesn’t age poorly in the future but I really don’t think it’ll be close. I’ve no idea what a health or carceral scare would do to this race but either also seem within the realm of possibility.