Trump got more votes than her, Biden, and all of the other sc primary candidates combined. pic.twitter.com/6JT6G3HGXJ— Jenna Fredo (@LynkLuv) February 25, 2024
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.
They would, if he were the candidate. They will vote for Newsom,
Somebody upthread said Trump was winning Republicans 75-25 (which is true) as if that were a good thing. Somebody else pointed out that more Republicans are anti-Trump in Whitopia, and that's true also.
MY point, consistently, has been that if 25% of Republicans nationwide will never vote for Trump (which I believe is true) that he has to win the election with Democrats and Independents, which he DID in 2016 but which he gave up on in the White House and I don't see much effort to get them back.
But I solved that problem by buying a new snowblower this year.
This subject is all the rage on MSNBC
He isn’t naive about people.
In 2016, Trump had little experience in Washington politics, and had to depend on people who knew it to chart a course.
The fact that his administration opened the eyes of many to just how far the Deep State/Swamp/Blob extended in American politics is a reminder of that.
Barr is one example. Wray is another. But perhaps the best example is Gina Haspel, the current CIA Director.
To answer the question “Who suggested Gina Haspel to head up the CIA?” is to understand the scope of that specific problem. Because Gina Haspel is NOT MAGA, not even on the side of Trump or his Administration. She is, in my opinion, an outright, hostile enemy of Trump. She was the CIA Station Chief in London during March-May 2016, when Brennan’s CIA was engaging foreign intelligences to “bump” people associated with Trump as an excuse to elevate intelligence “chatter” on them, and enable the FBI to obtain FISA warrants to surveil them...for political purposes.
As the Station Chief in London at the peak of this, it would be asinine to even think she was uninvolved in this. Of course, nobody knew this then (outside of the cabal).
But we know it now.
Trump would have no way of knowing this. So he had to depend on someone who knew that landscape to get a recommendation, in the same way any successful Chief Executive would. Who was that? Who recommended her to succeed Brennan? (Who besides John Brennan, Leon Panetta, Michael Morell, Michael Hayden, and of course, James Clapper)
Nobody knows. But someone did. And perhaps Trump did not know then that every single one of those people who supported the nomination of Gina Haspel had been working feverishly behind the scenes to frame him up in some fashion by spying on him to search for something to put into the media.
The same people who fault Trump specifically for this pick (and other picks in general) are often the same people who denigrate General Michael Flynn for meeting with FBI agents without White House counsel present, where he naively assumed they were all on the same team working to solve a problem that could harm the country, instead of knowing the FBI deliberately set Flynn up so that they could find a way, in orchestration with the media, to eliminate him.
So, yes. Trump was inexperienced in his first term, and probably had no idea of the Deep State evil that existed, that it existed not to help America, but to help themselves and foreign interests. But people learn, and I sure trust President Trump to have learned from it in a way that you and I never will.
“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,”
The election was stolen through illegal mail-in votes. The author has no credibility.
Trump got more votes than her, Biden, and all of the other sc primary candidates combined. pic.twitter.com/6JT6G3HGXJ— Jenna Fredo (@LynkLuv) February 25, 2024
These weren’t “independents” they were leftists who voted in the GOP primary. Many, many interviews of those who identified as “Democrat”, which were 27% according to exit polls, said they would vote for Biden over Trump. Plain as day.
Tortured stats lie
“Eggs are $5 a dozen”
Sounds like a good time to start some serious dieting...
Let’s cut to the chase: Two questions -
1) Do you believe registered Republicans can form a majority government (House, Senate, Presidency) and run the country according to generally accepted conservative principles?
2) If you don’t, where are the votes going to come from to elect a government different from the mess we have now?
Eggs are $5 a dozen.
***********
Gotta get those egg layers to do a little more pooping.
It does make good fertilizer for gardens and other plants.
If South Carolina had ranked choice voting then Nikki Haley would be the Democratic nominee.
She beat Biden.
Lol.
There are two kinds of “conservatives”:
(1) Those who believe in conservative principles and are prepared to make major and if necessary radical changes to make that happen.
(2) Those who want to “conserve” leftist victories.
Presumably you are discussing group 1.
Lol.
Love it, don’t you??
Too funny.
Replying to this
“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.”
...
From the “A false premise leads to false conclusions” file;
RUSH LIMBAUGH; “Independents basically are people who think that they are more open-minded than everything else. They are not partisan.
They haven’t made up their minds in advance of anything.
They wait for the issues, and they’re not tied to any particular party or ideology — and they also happen to know that political leaders think they are the ones who determine the winner of elections. Because the independents, whoever wins them traditionally wins. I said, for the most part, independents are just liberals that don’t want to admit it. They’re Democrat liberals who don’t want to admit it.”
Repeated for emphasis;
“...independents are just liberals that don’t want to admit it. They’re Democrat liberals who don’t want to admit it.”
Quote exccerpted from here;
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/01/29/my_apology_to_the_independents/
RUSH was a smart man, with incredible communication skills.
If you take out the 15% of the Dems that voted in the Republican primary President Trump won in a complete blow out.
Great post.
If you read the many articles about Nikki voters they confirm Rush’s assessment.
They are “squishy” liberals—don’t demand tampons in boys bathrooms but they are ok with it.
Another article by this author revealed that Custer was the true winner at Little Bighorn.
“Populism” is one of those terms that’s used like “Fascism”, it’s basically used to describe anything a liberal or a RINO disagrees with.
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