Why isn’t GOP voter dissatisfaction a bigger news story?
Nikki Haley is still claiming convention delegates
People are heckling Joe Biden at public events. You’ve heard about it. Lots of folks are dissatisfied with Biden’s handling of the Netanyahu led Israeli government. Count me as one of them. It gives me the creeps to think about Biden hugging him.
That’s not all. Biden is old. Maybe you’ve noticed. I would like to see younger candidates in many public offices.
Biden was never my top choice for president, but looking at the results of his leadership and policies I have to admit Biden has done a very good job as president. I don’t agree with everything he’s done. I don’t agree with anyone 100% of the time. I’m not sure I always agree with myself sometimes. So all things considered I will be voting for Joe Biden in November. With enthusiasm.
If he dies in office, he dies. That is why we have a line of succession. That line of succession would guarantee a new president who would be aligned with the values I think are critical, defense of basic rights, continuation of a liberal democracy, restraint of reactionary conservative judges, economic policies meant to benefit ordinary people, environmental policies and leadership on climate issues.
Anyway, I’m just noting the Democratic dissatisfaction with Biden the national media has been correctly focusing on. What I’m not hearing a lot about is the Republican dissatisfaction with Donald Trump. National news likes to tell us about surveys and polls, but I haven’t seen a lot of analysis on the results of meaningful primary votes. I guess I have to do it myself.
A note of caution, primaries turn out the most committed party voters, turnout is very low, and each state is a little bit different in terms of how the vote is run, who is on the ballot, etc, but here’s what I found: Biden is significantly more popular than Trump.
So far Trump has averaged 75.6% of the vote by state, but Nikki Haley - remember her? She’s one of the many challengers to the losing former president who suspended her campaign on March 6th - has accumulated 21.43% of the primary vote. Even after she suspended her campaign she’s gotten 14.78% of the vote compared to Trump’s 80.73%.
Biden has averaged 86.07%. His most serious rival is “uncommitted”, the protest vote, with 4.37%.
There are those who assert that there are people switching parties to vote against Trump in primaries just to make him look bad, as if a voter could somehow make Trump look worse than he makes himself look, like we don’t know what he’s like. But to take it seriously I looked at states with open primaries, where people can choose which race to vote in, vs closed primaries, where you must be registered in the party to vote.
In open primaries Trump has 75.1% vs Haley at 20.03%.
In closed primaries Trump 74.63% vs Haley 22.58%.
Clearly, among the most engaged voters Trump, the former president, is having a problem. It’s not a story I’ve heard in national media. Sure, Trump’s base isn’t, or wasn’t, the typical engaged GOP voter of old. They may still turn out in droves excited to vote in November. But Trump has trials and a convention to get through.
There’s been a lot of speculation about a potential disaster on the scale of 1968 for the Democratic primary.
Maybe we should be hearing speculation about the potential for disaster in the Republican Party convention. Will ordinary Republicans be excited by an excessive display of nepotism, personal greed of powerful figures surrounding their candidate who is openly embracing a plan for autocracy? Will they line up to vote for a man who is promising to deprive all kinds of people of basic rights in similar fashion to his promise to end Roe v Wade? Will they trust him to seat another Supreme Court Justice to rule on his own cases in the court? If any case should be allowed. Will they vote for the guy who suggests he will pardon himself and be a dictator “for a one day.”
The numbers show about 25% of Republican voters are not happy with Trump as their candidate, while 14% are uncomfortable with Biden. The 11 point spread equates to more than 8 million voters in November. Yes, it makes a difference which states they are from. But there’s an intangible.
It’s doubtful that any meaningful number of Democrats unhappy with Biden are going to vote for Trump, but likely that significant numbers of old school Republicans will hold their noses and vote for a normal man like Biden. And how many people on either side will simply sit the vote out? I’m guessing not a lot.