Trump primary vote not adding up
Despite losing the White House in 2020, Donald Trump is running for president again as an incumbent.
Just ask him. Or better yet, ask the eight starry-eyed Republicans who lined up to debate him beginning last summer, only to have Trump refuse to engage them and their Potomac River dreams.
It’s axiomatic: Incumbent presidents don’t have the time or inclination to debate wannabe presidents from their own party. (For confirmation, see Dean Phillips, Marianne Williamson, or even Robert F. Kennedy Jr.)
Trump is bolstered in his magical incumbent behavior by the fact that a solid majority of Republicans believe – astonishingly enough – that the election four years ago was rigged, and Trump was the winner.
In light of this and other factors, such as overall name recognition, why are Trump’s primary election numbers as stunted as they are? While he may be running away with the nomination, he’s not exactly running Ronald Reagan-like for his party’s nomination.
In 1984, the incumbent Reagan accumulated a 99% share of that year’s primary election ballots.
In the three contested primary ballots to date, Trump’s 2024 share of the vote is 59%. That puts him more than 40 percentage points behind the Reagan pace of four decades ago.
Trump captured the Iowa caucuses with 52% of the vote and squeezed by Nikki Haley in the New Hampshire primary 54% to 43%. Only in South Carolina and in the recent Michigan primary did Trump put significant daylight between himself and his chief rival Haley, 60% to 40% and 68% to 27%, respectively.
Maybe one explanation for Reagan’s stellar results in 1984 was that he was running against ex-Minnesota governor Harold Stassen, a perennial aspirant for president who was long past his prime. Trump’s challengers are far more relevant and fresh, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (now withdrawn) and Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Maybe. But incumbent Republican presidents have a history of scoring outsized primary election victories, going back to Dwight Eisenhower. When Ike ran for a second term in 1956, his share of the vote in that year’s 14 Republican state primaries was 90%.
(Only Ohio stood between Eisenhower and unanimity. Maybe out of an abundance of courtesy, Ike ceded the Buckeye State primary to the state’s senior U.S. senator, conservative John W. Bricker.)
Nobody in their right mind would suggest that George W. Bush measures up to Dwight D. Eisenhower, but Bush, like Ike, smoked his party challengers. Against a weak field, Bush the younger rolled to the 2004 Republican nomination with a 98% share of all primary ballots cast.
Even Bush II’s dad, George H.W. Bush, who did face determined opposition from the deeply conservative gadfly Pat Buchanan, performed better – much better – than Trump is now doing.
“Poppy” Bush garnered 73% of the Republican primary and caucus votes cast in 1992, 14 points better than Trump so far in 2024.
Nor need this brief survey confine itself to incumbent Republican presidents. In 1960, Vice President Richard Nixon, on his way to the GOP nomination, collected 90% of the ballots cast in 12 primaries, including seven in which Nixon faced off against the talented and exceedingly wealthy Republican governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller.
“We have to be honest and say that 40% of the electorate in a deeply Trumpy state like South Carolina voting against Trump is a huge showing of opposition precisely because the nomination race is effectively over,” noted Josh Marshall of TPM, an online, left-leaning news and commentary site.
“This is a lot of persistent opposition,” Marshall argues, “for a candidate who has always been running as a de facto incumbent.”
Philip Bump of the Washington Post, claiming “Trump’s primary numbers … are not indicative of a fervent Republican skepticism about Trump,” asks: “What’s more probable – that someone who prefers Haley to Trump politically will vote for [President Joe] Biden or that they will grumble and vote for Trump?”
Party opposition to Trump is not intense – and certainly not fervent enough to enable Haley to grab the nomination – but it appears to be persistent. And compared to past Republican incumbents, it’s notable.
Trump is not everyone’s incumbent.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.