Trump’s biggest obstacle in the US presidential election in November
Voters who supported it in 2016 turned away and lost in 2020
The biggest weakness is the inability to expand support.
The New York Times (NYT) reported on the 6th (local time) that former US President Donald Trump overwhelmingly won the Republican presidential nomination, but revealed limitations in receiving support from suburban residents, non-partisan voters, and moderate voters.
Trump still does not have the support of the class that was the key reason he lost the 2020 presidential election. They supported President Joe Biden at the time.
In the Virginia primary on the 5th, Trump won over Nikki Haley by an overwhelming margin of 28%. However, he lost in suburban constituencies. He also won by a 51% margin in North Carolina, but the margin of victory was very small in the suburban areas of Charlotte and Raleigh, where wealthy, well-educated people live.
Trump has shown himself unconcerned about those who do not support him, recently threatening to excommunicate those who donate to his political opponents.
◆ “Candidate Haley easily wins over Biden over Trump”
Trump’s inability to expand his support base is the biggest obstacle to winning the presidential election in November.
A recent NYT/Siena College poll showed that candidate Haley would easily beat President Biden than Trump.
Opinion polls show that President Biden’s popularity has decreased significantly compared to when he won four years ago. Only 83% of voters who supported Biden in 2020 expressed their intention to support him this year as well. This is because support among young people, black people, and progressive voters has decreased due to aging, siding with Israel, and the aftereffects of the economic crisis.
On the other hand, 97% of voters who supported Trump said they would support him again.
However, Adam Geller, a Republican polling expert who worked at Trump’s campaign headquarters during the 2020 presidential election, pointed out, “Most opinion polls show that moderate voters have not yet decided which candidate to support.”
Trump has been shunned by moderate suburban voters since he became the Republican presidential candidate in 2016.
Biden campaign aides Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and Julie Chavez Rodriguez wrote in a memo on the 6th, “Support for Trump does not go beyond the category of MAGA (Trump’s campaign slogan, meaning “Make America Great Again”). “Every exit poll shows that he received unwavering support from the most conservative voters,” he wrote.
The reason Trump failed to be re-elected in the 2020 presidential election is because the moderate voters who supported him in 2016 turned their backs. In a recent NYT/Siena College poll, moderate voters showed that Trump and Biden had the same approval rating at 42% each. However, so far in the Republican primary process, Trump has not received support from moderate voters.
◆Many Republican voters say they will not lose when they lose a criminal trial
Some, but not all, within the Republican Party are concerned about Trump’s criminal trial. In a CNN poll released on the 5th, one in five voters in the Republican primary in California and one in three voters in North Carolina answered that Trump would not be eligible to be president if he is convicted.
“There are anti-Trump Republican and moderate voters who supported Haley even though they knew Trump would win,” said Sarah Longwell, a pollster for the Republican Party Against Trump. “This shows that Trump is vulnerable even within the party,” he said.
In addition, voters in Virginia, who lost to Trump in the Super Tuesday primary on the 5th, cited their opposition to a nationwide abortion ban as the biggest reason in exit polls.
Republican strategists expect that most voters participating in the primary will support Trump in the general election. The basis is that exit polls from primary elections in New Hampshire and South Carolina showed that 4 out of 10 voters who supported Haley supported Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
However, these exit poll results may paradoxically reveal Trump’s weakness.
During the 2020 presidential election, about 9% of Republican voters said they supported a candidate other than Trump. This is more than twice the number of Democratic voters who said they supported a candidate other than Biden.
In the primary on the 5th, one in three Republican voters in California, North Carolina, and Virginia answered that they would not support the Republican presidential candidate.
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.