When eight Republican candidates merge Voltron-like to challenge former President Donald Trump and make their case for the 2024 nomination, they will illustrate the difficulty of toppling the frontrunner.
The working theory of virtually every Republican campaign is that if they could get Trump one-on-one, they can win.
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There is a prospective winning non-Trump coalition among GOP primary voters. Despite his majorities in the national polls, Trump is at 43.2% in Iowa and 44.3% in New Hampshire, according to the RealClearPolitics average.
In the latest Des Moines Register/NBC News poll finds that a 41% plurality wants the party to keep being led by Trump. But 31% want a new leader with different behavior and strategies and 26% say Trump was a good president but it is time to consider other possibilities.
Those last two groups add up to a 57% majority willing to at least contemplate a post-Trump future.
A national Ipsos/Washington Post poll released the day of the debate found that 64% of likely Republican primary voters were considering casting their ballot for Trump compared to 51% who said the same for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL).
The trouble is that anti-Trump Republicans are split between those to the right of the former president and those to the right.
There are also some who want a scorched-earth de-Trumpification of the Republican Party, not just a different nominee.
But that alienates the soft Trump supporters that DeSantis in particular realizes are key to actually winning the nomination.
In January, DeSantis peaked at 31.3% when he consolidated a large slice of Trump-skeptical GOP voters in the aftermath of a disappointing midterm election.
Over time, however, Trump was able to win back some of his soft supporters. A combination of the indictments and DeSantis’s early surge revitalized a listless Trump campaign.
Then former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie began to win over some of the Republicans looking for a more overtly anti-Trump candidate, a lane that former Vice President Mike Pence is now entering.
That is more appealing to a slice of the Republican primary electorate that is especially important in New Hampshire. But it puts a ceiling on a campaign’s support well short of what is needed to win the nomination while fracturing the coalition that can potentially beat Trump.
In the Ipsos poll, Christie’s net favorability is minus 28 points and only 14% of likely GOP voters said they were considering voting for him.
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy has started winning over primary voters seeking a younger alternative who is still mostly Trump Lite, otherwise a prime DeSantis constituency.
If you are too pro-Trump, however, the former president can argue that it is better to just vote for the genuine article. Elvis impersonators, for example, were not in much demand before the King’s death in 1977.
This approach also naturally limits a candidate’s appeal to primary voters who want to move on from Trump.’’
Ramaswamy has plus 26 net favorability in the Ipsos poll, but only 23% are actively considering voting for him. That’s less than Pence’s share.
The whole dynamic plays out amid calls for the Republican field to consolidate around a single Trump alternative.
Polling data suggests DeSantis remains best positioned to capitalize on any Republican second thoughts about Trump despite falling far behind him.
But the fact that DeSantis is so far behind — a national Yahoo News out this week has him trailing Trump by 40 points — has convinced other lower-polling candidates and some donors that the Florida governor’s challenge has already failed.
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The bottom line is that either Trump or some alternative can win a majority of Republican voters.
How any alternative positions himself against Trump is important. The other candidates have to dance with Trump if they want to lead.