Miami Mayor Francis Suarez became the first 2024 Republican presidential candidate to drop out of the race this week, but he won’t be the last.
Suarez has begun a trend toward the winnowing of the GOP field months before the first votes are cast in Iowa in January. The only question is how long that will take.
DESANTIS SHOWCASES ABILITY TO GOVERN WITH HURRICANE RESPONSE
The Republican field is big on paper. But in practice, nearly all the candidates are polling closer to Suarez, who did not qualify for the first GOP debate earlier this month, than overwhelming front-runner former President Donald Trump.
Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson managed to qualify for the stage in Milwaukee. They are each at 0.4% in the RealClearPolitics national polling average and 0% in the latest Economist/YouGov poll.
Any candidate who could not make it onto the debate stage has to answer serious questions about their path to electoral relevance, much less the nomination. And the rules for participating in the next debate in September will only get stricter.
Most of the eight candidates who debated in Milwaukee are closer to the end of their presidential campaigns than the beginning. The question is how many know it.
Nationally, there are only three Republican candidates polling above 5% in the RealClearPolitics average, though former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence are close and could be rounded up to that figure. Only two are in the double digits, with the rest not particularly close. And Trump is winning an absolute majority of the vote.
Fortunately for the other Republicans running, there is no national primary, though those polling figures might be suggestive of what would happen on Super Tuesday if a non-Trump candidate hasn’t gained traction by then. The early states are more important, and there, Trump is below 50%.
In New Hampshire, that is where the good news for Trump’s rivals appears to end. Trump’s lead hasn’t been under 30 points since mid-July, and the last two statewide polls show him hovering around 50%. There are candidates closer to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in the race for second place than Trump in the quest for first, and an Emerson poll has former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie leading DeSantis by a statistically insignificant margin.
A breakthrough does look possible in Iowa, where DeSantis has been polling at or around 20% and Trump seems hellbent on repeating mistakes that cost him the caucuses in 2016.
How many candidates will make it to Iowa? DeSantis has a stronger case for continuing than any other and is best positioned to inherit Trump’s support if the former president’s legal burdens become too onerous to continue. But other candidates, from Haley to entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, received their share of buzz from the first debate and are going to spend the next few weeks seeing if they can build on it.
Many of these candidates will have no more impact than Suarez, no matter whether they drop out or remain in the race.
We are still early in the 2024 Republican presidential nomination contest. In past races, the Iowa lead has flipped multiple times between now and the caucuses.
It is not going to be early much longer, however. The fall might be the first time primary voters seriously look at their options for next year. Then, the holidays will come around, to be followed in short order by the caucuses.
Then, it is off to the races.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
In the Republican primary fight, the end of the beginning is near.
However, for most of those running, it is the beginning of the end.