Posted on 02/26/2024 7:42:01 PM PST by DoodleBob
I’ve been taking the under on Nikki Haley for several weeks now and I’ve been wrong every time. So I looked under the hood on the South Carolina results and what I see is a signal that Trump is weaker than he looks.
Let’s start with the exit polls.
Haley kept it close: independent voters made up 22 percent of the electorate and she won them 62-37. South Carolina is an open primary, so this was a case of independents showing up to vote against Trump in a meaningless contest. That’s bad news for him.
Among people who thought the economy was either “good” (Haley +73) or “not so good” (Haley +1) Haley fought Trump to better than a draw.
This matters because Biden’s theory of the case is that the economy is good and people are going to recognize that. If Biden can even get voters to “ehhh, the economy is not so good,” suddenly voters are much less receptive to Trump.
Haley beat Trump by +9 with voters with a college degree. That’s expected, but still a point of weakness.
Not expected: Among married Republicans Trump was only +3. In recent elections, married voters have been a huge area of strength for Republicans—Trump was +7 among marrieds in 2020. South Carolina shows us that half of a core Republican bloc is turning out to vote against Trump even when his opponent has no chance of winning. Not great for him.
But it keeps getting worse: Nearly a third of the voters said that Trump isn’t fit to serve as president and Haley won them by Saddam Hussein numbers.
Last data point, which is something I’ve been fixated on since I did The Focus Group a couple weeks ago: Among voters who believe that Trump lost in 2020, his numbers are ghastly.
Important to note: 36 percent of the electorate said that yes, Biden won fair and square. And with those people, Haley was +64.1
I am growing convinced that forcing Trump to claim that he actually won in 2020—and belaboring that point over and over and over again—is a key to victory in 2024. When people see Trump lying about something they know isn’t true, it pits him against them, makes the relationship between Trump and the voter adversarial. The voters say, “Wait a minute, this guy is trying to scam me.”
And Trump is trapped because he’s so committed to the Big Lie that he can’t back down from it now.
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Side note: Long time readers know that I don’t do hopeium here. I might be the most fatalistic guy at The Bulwark. But I’m realistic, too, and the numbers here demonstrate very clearly that Trump has a couple of giant soft spots that can be exploited with voters.
If you want measured analysis—not cheerleading, but not doomscrolling either—then you should be with us this election. We don’t play both-sides games. We don’t platform bad actors. We see the world clearly and we fight for liberal democracy. That’s the job.
Come ride with us.
Kudos to Jonathan Last for comparing Nikki to Saddam Hussein.
Thanks. Hope you are wrong though! We’ll see.
Could many of those so called independents, were actually RATS crossing over to vote in the GOP primary?
Well, since he fired his national security advisor because Pence told him to, I suppose you are correct.
It doesn't matter. Democrats vote in November.
I haven't had an answer to my question above.
Do you believe a MAGA government (House, Senate, Presidency) can be elected by the 75% of registered Republicans who vote for Trump in the primaries, accepting that the 25% Haley Republicans will never vote for Trump under any circumstances?
If you do, explain why.
If you don't, explain what ticket and what policies will attract enough Democrats to send Trump back to the White House, like it did in 2016.
And please do not cite letting criminals who happen to be black out of jail, schmoozing with the Kardashians, and advertising his mug shot. On election day, 95% of American descendants of slaves (ADOS) will vote for the Democrat, you know it and I know it.
The answer to your question is:
—This is February.
—The election is in November
The Trump campaign has plenty of time to address any and all issues.
I am confident they can do it.
But not today.
and not next week.
P.S. We don’t even know for sure who the opposition is going to be.
$50 to FR says it's Newsom/Whitmer. Deal?
Payable after Labor Day.
I have no clue at all.
That was my frustration with your post.
Who knows what current events will take place between now and November.
I don’t think the Democrats have the slightest clue what they are going to do about Biden.
This is about to be a wacko year.
Anything could happen.
Anything.
I want to continue my rant.
2024 reminds me of 1968.
Just a reminder of how wacko that year was.
—LBJ was President. At this point in the year the consensus was he would be re-elected even though he just squeaked by Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary.
—Let us freeze time. Richard Nixon is the likely Republican nominee. George Wallace was running as a third party candidate.
—The White House did polling and realized that LBJ was in deep trouble in Wisconsin and other states. LBJ stuns the nation with a radio address announcing he would not seek re-election. This was in March, 1968.
—At that point Robert Kennedy entered the race.
—George Wallace was shot and badly injured on May 15.
—Robert Kennedy was assassinated on June 5 on the night he won the California primary. At the moment before he was shot he was considered the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination and the White House.
—Let us freeze time again. After the RFK assassination the Democratic nomination was wide open with Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern having won the most primaries.
—The Republican convention nominates Richard Nixon in early August.
——The Democratic convention nominates Hubert Humphrey in late August. He was won no primaries. There is wild rioting in the streets outside the convention and total chaos on the convention floor for days.
—Richard Nixon wins the election in November by 1% over Hubert Humphrey.
Conclusion: Nothing was obvious. Nothing was predictable. The world in February had nothing to do with the world in November.
Back to 2024—we are in February.
Hang on tight!
Jonathan V. Last us a neocon idiot.
Exit Polls are for MORONS
It’s the reincarnated neocon “Weekly Standard”.
Unfortunately NH is no longer a GOP stronghold. Sununu?
It was invaded by lefties from Massachusetts.
Even the Old Man in the Mountain packed up and left.
Yeah—NH is getting tougher each year—no doubt about that one.
I was so impressed that President Trump won that primary in a Republican Party full of Karens and lattee drinkers and a bunch of Democrats and Democratic leaning Independents voting in the primary.
Time will show that was the toughest primary—by far.
One other NH comment—I used to travel in that state decades ago and in northern NH they referred to the people in southern NH as “valley people”.
It was meant as an insult.
Lol.
I believe it’s going to be around 80%
So true
Btw—one other comment on 1968 and how it is relevant for today.
Nixon had everything going against them.
Wallace took entire southern states from him that would become solid Republican in future elections.
Nixon threaded the needle and got lucky.
Sometimes that is what it takes.
The other important lesson is that a strong third party run means that President Trump does not need 50% of the popular vote to win.
If RFK Jr. can run as a Libertarian that means he is on the ballot in all states. Polls are all over the place for him. I have seen numbers as low as 5% and as high as 30%.
You said Pence told Trump to fire General Flynn.
Do you know that to be true, that Pence "told Trump to do it"? I don't know if Pence told him to do anything like that, although Pence was the person supposedly "lied" to.
I have done considerable research into this, and it was an orchestrated hit.
On January 26, acting Attorney General Sally Yates went to the White House to warn lawyer Donald McGahn the Flynn might have misled the vice president. She said that since the Russians knew that there were discrepancies between what Flynn had said to Kislyak and what he had apparently told Pence of their conversation, the national security advisor might be vulnerable to blackmail.
On February 9th, Washington Post article by Greg Miller, Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima printed leaked parts of the Flynn-Kislyak call that appeared to contradict Flynn’s conversation with Pence. This is a timed leak to the Washington Post, the publication of which appears to be done directly in advance of the meeting scheduled for the next day between Pence and McCabe. The very first paragraph in the article states unequivocally:
“National security adviser Michael Flynn privately discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with that country’s ambassador to the United States during the month before President Trump took office, contrary to public assertions by Trump officials, current and former U.S. officials said.”
In no uncertain terms, The Washington Post states that Flynn lied.
Then, the next day, February 10th, (this is from Lee Smith’s “The Plot Against The President”): "When McCabe appeared at the White House the next day, he was called into Pence’s office. Priebus and McGahn were there, watching news coverage of the leaked intercept. They were upset. They asked to see the information McCabe had on Flynn. “This is totally opposite,” said Pence. “It’s not what he said to me.”
To all intents and purposes, the loyal Obama officials in the FBI, DOJ, and compliant media set a trap, baited it perfectly, pitched the public framing of the issue in the media, drumming up that Flynn was a liar, untrustworthy, vulnerable to blackmail, backed up with fake information in the trap, and sprung the trap on VP Pence publicly. All coordinated precisely to bring the public and unknowing dupes in the administration into full throated calls to fire Flynn for lying.
Do you know for a fact that Pence "told" President Trump to fire General Flynn? If so, do you have a source for that?
Because, as I said above, this was a coordinated effort to "bring the public and unknowing dupes in the administration into full throated calls to fire Flynn for lying".
I don't know if Pence was an unknowing dupe in this, or if he was a full partner in orchestrating it. But to my knowledge, he was not the person who "told Trump to do it". Now, in retrospect, I believe Pence was in on it due to anything from blackmail to his ideological alignment, but I have no proof of that.
You might find the chronologically ordered and sourced timeline I put together in my own effort to understand what had gone on there. Feel free to download it at:
LINK: TIMELINE OF THE GOVERNMENTAL ABUSE OF LT. GENERAL MICHAEL FLYNN
The Lefties in NH are from NY and VT. All along the Connecticut River is deep blue.
The border counties with MA are red as red can be. Refugees from MA.
Ah
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