Sleepwalking Toward Catastrophe? (with Whit Ayres)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to season three of the Focus Group podcast. I’m Sarah Longwell, Publisher of The full work and we’re kicking off twenty twenty three by talking about twenty twenty four. I’m sorry. So I gotta tell you, I was not planning on bringing the show back this early in the year, but I basically couldn’t not tell you guys what I have been seeing in my focus groups since the twenty twenty two midterms. Future episodes will drop on Saturdays per usual, but I couldn’t wait to get this episode into the world.

Now, ever since summer of twenty twenty two. Basically around the January sixth committee, we noticed a real drop in enthusiasm for Trump’s twenty twenty four candidacy among voters who had just voted for him in the twenty sixteen and twenty twenty general elections.

And

that phenomenon has accelerated since Trump and his gang of election deniers with the twenty twenty two midterms. So we’re gonna listen to a bunch of those kind of maybe trumpers today. But I knew that there was still a cohort of Trump diehards out there. So he started to screen for two time Trump voters who also viewed him very favorably. And those voters, they are partying like it is twenty fifteen.

They still love Trump and no other GOP candidates are turning their heads. We’re also gonna hear from those voters today, the always trumpers.

But there

was also this question that was nagging me. I wanted to know just how large this group of always trumpers was because the size of that number matters a great deal when assessing Trump’s ongoing political viability even at this moment of real weakness for the former president, but I couldn’t get that number with focus groups. So to answer that question, I turn to today’s guest Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who is the president of North Star Opinion Research. He just did an exclusive poll for the Bulwark on the twenty twenty four Republican primary. Whit, thanks for being here.

Sarah, great to be with you. So,

Whit, you were one of my favorite pollsters, and you’ve done a lot of survey work in order to understand Republican voters. And you did this cool thing that I’ve always liked where you bucketed Republicans into three different camps. Always Trump, maybe Trump, and never Trump. I just always found that framing really useful when thinking about the gradations of Trump voters. Can you just give us a quick primer on those buckets?

Sure. We first came up with that in the middle of last year when you started seeing the same numbers pop up poll after poll. There’s a never Trump contingent that is about ten percent, maybe twelve percent but really no more than that. Howard Bauchner: We are small but lady. Yes, yes, small but mighty.

That’s right. There is an always Trump contingent. That in this latest poll looks like about twenty eight to thirty percent. These are people who believe that Donald Trump hung the moon, that they will walk through a wall of flame for him. You cannot criticize him with these people.

Criticizing Donald Trump with the always Trump voters is like criticizing Jesus in a rural evangelical church. You’re not gonna change the view about Jesus, but you’re sure gonna trash your reputation of the person who criticises Jesus. And that’s the situation you’re facing with the always Trump group. But there is a larger group, a majority of the party now. That believes that they they liked his job in office, maybe not his behavior, but they liked his policies.

But they just want somebody else or at least they’re open to somebody else. Now keep in mind, these people would vote for Trump again over Biden if it were a two way race in a general election. But they’re skeptical that Donald Trump can win and they also believe that he’s too focused on the past rather than on the future. So they’re open to somebody else. And the question is whether that somebody else can consolidate the roughly two thirds of the Republican electorate.

That is still open and still available to be persuaded.

So I came to you because you’ve done a poll previously that I had seen where you’ve done this bucketing between the never Trump, always Trump, maybe Trump.

Right. And I

kinda wanted to recreate that now post midterms. Because I really wanted to understand the always Trump number. And one of the ways we tried to get at this was to ask, you know, how many people would follow Trump on an independent run. If he were to lose the Republican primary, but then go ahead and run as an independent. We were like, okay.

That’s a good way to get to the die hards. And as you just noted, that was twenty eight percent. Is that the same number that you had before when you were looking at always Trump the last time you did the poll, is that roughly the same?

It’s a little less. When we were looking at it before, we were placing it in the thirty to forty percent range rather than the twenty eight percent that we see today. He’s definitely weaker. Than he was before the midterms. The poor performance of the Republicans in the midterms really did a number on him and the inception that he is a winner and can bring winners along with it.

So it is lower, but it is not insignificant at all. You know, if you’ve gotta lock on twenty eight to thirty percent of Republican primary voters, that’ll go a long way in a multi candidate primary.

Yeah. And we’ll dig into that a little bit more because I I totally agree with you. It is interesting to think that people who were always Trump have kind of, you know, moved away into maybe Trump, which sort of goes to the idea that this number is a snapshot in time. And not necessarily where it will be always, which is I think important to keep in mind that this stuff is fluid. But you did a bigger poll for us.

And one of the things that I think for the purposes of this show was interesting is how closely what you found in your polling reflected what we were seeing in the roughly ten focus groups that we’ve done —

Right. —

with the the sort of maybe trumpers and the always trumpers since the midterms But can you just walk us through the top lines of the poll that you just did and some of the other findings? Sure, sure.

First of all, let me say, this was a national online survey of a thousand like Republican primary and caucus voters, and it looks like what we know to be today’s Republican Party. It’s overwhelmingly white, ninety three percent, three percent Hispanic, two percent Asian, one percent black. There’s more noncollege voters in this SAP fifty seven percent and college graduates, forty three percent and that’s a function of the kinds of folks that Donald Trump has attracted into the Republic and party. Thirty eight percent are evangelical Christians. Sixty three percent support the GOP more than Trump twenty six percent support Trump more than the GOP.

But the key point here is that eighty five percent of these people in the sample voted for Trump in twenty twenty. Eighty five percent, seven percent for Biden, three percent for a third party candidate, five percent didn’t vote or wouldn’t say. So that’s this sort of never Trump group somewhere around ten, twelve percent. But eighty five percent of these folks voted for Trump. So we are talking about Trump voters and Trump supporters.

Several key highlights. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis holds a substantial lead over Donald Trump on three different ballot tests. Trump is locked in consistently at twenty eight to thirty percent. So if it’s just a two way ballot, the status leads Trump fifty two to thirty, the restaurant decided On a three way ballot, we did Trump, DeSantis, and another candidate. DeSantis has forty four in that.

Trump twenty eight again, We did a ten way ballot with DeSantis at thirty nine, Trump twenty eight, Mike Pence says nine, Nikki Haley and Liz Cheney four percent each, and five other candidates are at one percent. So you see a consistent Trump number throughout all three of those ballots. One interesting tidbit, Sarah, is that for those people who say they support the GOP more than Donald Trump, Mike Pence is overtaken Trump. He’s still in second place, but I thought that was an interesting point from the cross paths. You mentioned the twenty eight percent of Republican primary voters who in a general election between DeSantis, Trump, and Biden would still vote for Trump.

The status would take fifty six percent in that of these Republican primary voters Trump would take twenty eight, Biden would get five, and the rest are undecided. So, DeSantis still gets a majority of those. So if you lose a quarter of the base vote, you’ve got a situation comparable to what we had in nineteen twelve. When former Republican president Teddy Roosevelt ran as a bull moose against Republican nominee William Howard Taft, and the Democratic nominee, Woodrow Wilson split the Republican vote and ensured that Democrat Wilson would win the election. In order to try to get a sense of why people may be reluctant to support Trump, even though they supported him the past, we did two different examples with a split sample.

Half the sample got one, half sample got the other. Donald Trump is the best candidate Republicans can nominate in twenty twenty four that comes in at thirty five. I supported Donald Trump when he was president, but I don’t think he can win the presidency in twenty twenty four, and I want a different nominee who can win is fifty two. And I did not support Donald Trump when he was and I did not want him to be the Republican nominee in twenty twenty four was thirteen. So a majority to say they want a different nominee who can win.

We asked that again what the second option was a little bit different this time. We said, I supported Donald Trump when he was president. But he now seems focused on the past and I want a nominee who’s focused on the future. That gets fifty seven percent We asked him an open ended question. Sarah, about what doubts do you have here for a Trump candidacy in twenty twenty four.

Now a lot of the people who support Donald Trump more than the GOP said they had no doubts at all. He was the best president we ever had and can’t wait till he’s back in the White

House. But

the other answers of the people who are looking somewhere else refer to his personal characteristics, not his policy positions or his record as present. So they talked about his behavior, his mouth, his age. He was too old. They thought maybe, like, like, somebody younger who could serve two terms rather than one, that he’s a loser, that he’s baggage, and that he’s two devices. The the

open ended questions are really interesting just because they totally reflect what we hear from the focus group participants about why they think Trump is not electable. And that is it’s not that they dislike Trump they’re not even saying that they disagree with his behavior. They think other people disagree with his behavior. Right. They think his baggage makes other people not vote for him.

And so they have these concerns about his electability. I hear it all the time in the focus groups. Let’s listen.

I’d like

to say fly out that I would vote for him because I do think that he does, what he says is gonna do. But at this point, there’s so many people that don’t like him. And I have friends that have the same feelings that I do. When it comes to politics, but they despise him. You know?

And it’s not because of what he did. They like what he did. They just don’t like his attitude.

You still

got a lot of people holding on to the election with stolen and blah blah blah. Maybe it was, but, you know, you can’t move on until you let go of this.

You know,

if he was president, that’d be great. Because, like, I like the policies. Honestly, I I consider that he’d lost less elections. I mean, midterms for

him, whether

or not he does a good job where he’s in

there.

Part

of his role as leader of the party is getting others elected within the party.

We lost a

lot of seats in twenty eighteen, twenty twenty, he lost. A lot of his candidates and endorsed lost many terms. Don’t

get me wrong. I I love Donald Trump and everything he stands for, but I mean, you look at him and people just across the US and even some Republicans. I mean, they just look at the guy and just discuss it buying for stupid reasons. I love Donald Trump, but I think the Sanders should be better for the country as a whole.

If you ask people about the twenty twenty election and if they’re sort of tired of hearing about it, they’ll definitely say yes. As times gone on, they’ve gotten more and more annoyed by Trump focusing on, like, looking back on twenty twenty. But when they offer reasons it often has to do much more with electability in their concerns that they don’t think that Donald Trump can win. And one of the things that I noticed, like, when I saw the drop off begin to occur, it was during the January sixth committee, like, prior to that, we had always had in any group of two time Trump voters, you’d get at least half the group wanting Trump to run again. But during the January sixth committee is when we started to see groups with zero people.

Like, multiple groups with zero people wanted to run again, and that was really unusual. And it really braised some bells for us. I don’t think it was the January sixth committee per se, because it wasn’t like they were sitting there watching the January sixth committee hearings and being like, oh, boy, Trump did some really bad things. I’m not gonna vote for him anymore. It was raising the specter of this idea of Trump has too much baggage, but the other thing that was happening was the rise of Rhonda Santa.

There was like this rondesantis boomlet. And I feel like these maybe Trump people It is both they they don’t think that Trump’s necessary electable, but they have somebody else that they do think is electable. Like, I think you and I would like it to be that people see Trump for who he is and they’re breaking with him, but it’s pretty clear that’s not what’s happening. No. Right?

The drift is more I want somebody like Trump. But I’m not sure Trump, the man, is it anymore. Right?

Yep. There’s no question. The sadness had a great year in twenty twenty two. I mean, a thumping reelection in what had been a very close swing state. And he is very, very popular in Florida.

So a lot of the people who like Trump, they also like DeSantis. And so some of them believe that with DeSantis, you get the policies that they like about Trump without the craziness. So that he is a more electable version of Donald Trump. Now, that being said, a lot of them don’t know very much about governor DeSantis. And we’re gonna have to see how he performs in these sort of living room to living room discussions that occur in Iowa and New Hampshire.

But he has had a very, very good year. He’s raised a ton of money, and he’s developed a very effective national reputation among the Republican Party base.

Yeah.

Boy do I agree with you on this point that they really like him, but it’s also sort of like a shallow commitment to him. Right. Like, they don’t know that much about him. They’re looking for a trumpy alternative. They like what he did on COVID.

They’ve seen YouTube clips of him like yelling at teenagers and masks. Yelling about Disney. You know, yelling at reporters in his state and they think, yes, like, that’s that’s what I like. And it’s like DeSantis Trump without the baggage. I always think it’s interesting how they always frame their interest in DeSantis in relation to Trump.

Right. Because Trump is still very much at the center of everybody’s political worldview with these voters, but let’s listen to house some of these folks, the folks who were

talking about the scientists being the the cure to what ails them on electability, hear what these voters had to say. I

think he’s Trump, not on steroids, is is how I like to explain it because he does basically the same type of things but in a whole different level, and I think that’s more appealing to people. Even if Trump said the same thing that he did, they’d like to sentence better. Just by the way they communicate. Trump doesn’t bother me at all. I mean, sometimes he does.

Sometimes I feel like he’s being like a child. But as long as he’s saying something that is were saying I’m okay with it. But ninety five percent of people I talked to

don’t feel that way. I

like that he he can get boats from a big range of people and doesn’t scare people away so bad. It shrunk us sometimes. I I know a lot of people just love, so I’d like them and I would vote for him again as president, but I don’t think the soonest would drive out the vote against him is bad.

He

does a good job of taking Trump’s strengths, you know, the the how he deals with media, how he deals

with people

who are combatant towards them, but he does a better job of communicating it. And he’s much more refined. When he he comes to policies policy decisions, you know, he’s not just going off the cuff I mean, it’s also a purple state in terms of blood

red. I

mean, in term Miami Dade, which has been blue ever since I’ve

been born. So

I think that you can do a better job of garnering new votes to his colleagues.

I have a lot

of friends. My son worked down in Florida for a long time. He was down there for almost a year. So, you know, oh, yeah. They call him, like, daddy DeSantis or something like

that. That’s creepy. So the the guy who said he turned Florida Blood Red. I’ve heard a lot of variations on that sentiment about Santis where there’s sort of this mythology that’s grown up around Florida. Right?

Like the free state of Florida. The scientists took it from a swing state people are like Florida. That was a place with hanging chads. You know, his first gubernatorial election against Killam was pretty close actually. Now he’s winning it by twenty points.

It’s a solidly red state. They’re picking up a lot of Hispanic voters. I think and I’m interested in what you think that There’s something in the psychology of Republican voters where Florida has taken on this sort of like mythic proportion. It is their version of California. It is the place where their policies thrive, and their way of doing things thrive.

That’s right. And he has made a real success at promoting those kinds of policies talking about Florida is a place where what goes to die and freedom lips It’s a very effective message for the Republican based voters. And Republicans know they’ve got to have Texas and Florida to counterbalance California and New York in the electoral college. So if you can put Florida firmly in the Republican camp along with Texas, then you’ve gone a long ways toward winning a majority of the electoral college vote nationally. I

think in your poll, he had like a seventy three percent favorability rating among all GOP voters, which is really high, but how durable is that favorability rating. So, like, it’s one thing to have, like, a high favorability because Trump voters like you. The dynamic of going head to head with Trump and not being able to sort of run alongside him as a Trump acolyte, Like, can he do that? Have you been watching him closely? Like, is he a talented enough politician?

Because it looks just based on your poll, the analysis from that is, desantis is winning head to head, and not all the polls show this. There’s other ones that show, you know, that Trump is still maybe because of his hundred percent name ID that he’s still winning in some of these head to head polls. But, like, once DeSantis goes head to head with Trump, can he sustain How does that work? It’s gonna

be really interesting to watch him operate. He’s very savvy. For example, He’s talked about promoting election integrity in Florida, starting an election integrity task force, but he’s never actually said the twenty twenty election was stolen. And I’ve watched what he said about that, and he’s walked a very fine line there. So he’s he’s keeping the door open to bringing in some people who would not go for Trump and his stolen election rhetoric.

But it’s gonna be real interesting to see how that works. You’re right, his his favorable rating overall is seventy three percent and fifty four of that seventy three is very favorable. So that’s way up there in Trump territory. Trump’s overall favorable rating is sixty eight percent in this sample. Thirty four percent varies thirty four percent somewhat.

So it’s a much more temperate evaluation of Donald Trump than it is of Ron DeSantis based on what they know about him today. Oh, hey.

Speaking of the Favorables, I also noticed that Nikki Haley and Glenn Youngkin were both about thirty points above water with the Trump first crowd, with the people who identify more with Trump than with the Republican party. And I found that piece fascinating. We’re gonna drop the poll to the show notes so that we can go look at the crosstabs. But what do you make about that? About our Nikki, Haley, and Glenn Youngkin, are these risk sleeper candidates?

Oh,

I think so. I mean, I I think they both got real potential. Nikki Haley has walked a very fine line, you know, pulling back from Trump and coming closer to him. Glenn Youngkin has not had as much contact or comment about Trump. And he still has a third of the republican party or more who don’t know who he is.

But he’s got a very strong thirty five to seven favorable, unfavorable rating among these Republican primary voters. So I think both of them have real potential as candidates. The best case scenario for Donald Trump is that these all get in, obviously. And we have a two thousand sixteen scenario again where Trump wins, as you pointed out, winner take all primaries with twenty eight percent or thirty percent. But these other candidates have some real potential, and I think that’s particularly true of Nikki Haley and Glenn Youngkin.

It’s funny. You

know, Glenn Youngkin never comes up in the groups. In part because they don’t know who he is. Right. You have to be pretty beltway focused. But Nikki Haley does come up.

Though it’s interesting, she comes up much more among swing voters. That’s what part of the reason I was so interested in this is that she’s the kind of person that the swing voters remember. She, like, reminds them of the normal GOP. Now I know you said she walks a fine line. I would say she’s walked back and forth across the line.

And

I’m trying to say it nicely, Sarah. I

understand. You could you’d be nice. I’ll be how I am. The it is funny to the swing voters who sort of have what I always call the rake and hangover. They sort of view the party in this way that is like ten years old, she’s the one they like.

So she surprised me a little less than Glenn Youngkin who I just never hear come up the name ID. But but I think part of what’s was interesting to me or what I was trying to explore here with this poll is if that always Trump faction, kind of implodes that you get more of an open primary scenario where if the bottom kind of falls out from Trump, DeSantis is a clear front runner. But then, like Haley and Youngkin sort of have a chance, Because otherwise, if you’re in the I’m scared about the twenty sixteen repeating itself, you sort of have to consolidate around somebody not to repeat the the sins of the past. Like, by January or by early February, you need people to be dropping out because last time, what happened is they went into those early primary states. They knifed each other, not Trump.

Christie knifed Rubio, knifed Jeb, whatever, and they all bled out slowly into super Tuesday where Trump’s just like put the whole thing away. And in that primary calendar, I’m gonna do a whole up on the GOP primary calendar because it is so important to how the cadence of twenty twenty four is gonna go. But anyway, I’m sorry, I am I’m getting myself off track. So I think are always Trump groups. They reflect the DeSantis admiration.

Like, they’re sort of desantis curious. They like him. They’re polite about him even though they’re sticking with Trump. Let’s

listen. I am in a great state of Florida, and I like the way DeSantis basically put Disney on notice, changed everything there, put in a government board instead of letting Disney run the county and run it into the ground. And the fact that he has basically made the statement that Florida is the state that woke up, comes to die And it’s huge here. If you look at the last election year, there was three small pockets of blue.

You know,

he’s doing what people want him to do.

I also have

friends that live in Florida, and they praise him up and down. I like they

took the immigrants, they crossed the border, illegally and sent them to

was it

Martha’s Vineyard? Martha’s

Vineyard. Yeah. Yeah. That

was that was right. That was a good thing to do. You know, I can respect him for that.

I had a second choice

to be DeSantis. But I I think ideally, I would like Trump to run DeSantis to be his VP. And then DeSantis Run for the next eight years. Boy, do I

hear the Trump DeSantis VP thing get floated a lot? So I want you to put your Ron DeSantis strategists had on with. And tell me, how do you win these types of people over. Because we’re gonna in a minute, I’m gonna place some more from them and just to show you how ride or die they are from Trump. But, like, they’re DeSantis curious.

They like him. They think what he’s doing is good. How do you move them from the always Trump category to the Pro DeSantis category.

I’m not sure it’s possible to do, Sarah. If you look at the people in this survey who support Trump more than the GOP. Ron DeSantis has a towering favorable, unfavorable rating of seventy nine to six. But if you pit them against each other, the people who support Trump more than the GOP go with Trump seventy to twenty. That’s the exact opposite of the people who support the GOP more than Donald Trump they go with DeSantis seventy to twelve.

So it’s like you have these two groups in the party that reflect mirror images of each other. And frankly, I don’t know as long as Donald Trump is living and breathing, and upright, I think it’s going to be really tough to peel a lot of those people away. Yeah. That’s

right. On on a side note, this thing about while he’s upright, man, McKay Robbins has this great piece in the Atlantic right now about the Republican party’s magical thinking. And he’s talking to a bunch of elected officials and he’s asking them like, well, what are you guys gonna do about Trump? It’s like goes to this question of how do you sort of pull the always chompers away. What do you do about them?

And a whole bunch of the elected officials off the record said he’s just gonna have to die. Like, that’s the only way we get out of this conundrum. Which to me, they called it something like an actuarial strategy. I I just like, That does not seem to me, I don’t know, like a sound strategy. But let’s jump in.

Let’s jump in to these always trumpers. I think people have a good sense of kind of generic two time Trump voters, but they more identify with the Republican Party than with Trump. They wanna move on. They like a guy like DeSantis. But I don’t think people have as much of a sense.

I know I didn’t until we changed the screen to the very favorable group have a really good sense of why they always trumpers were always trumpers. And so let’s listen to what they had to say about why they want to stick with

Trump. I’m

just ready to be proud of our leader again. Like, I feel embarrassed a lot when I see the current administration speaking. So, like, read from a teleprompter and then confused, like, really simple things and I

just feel

embarrassed and afraid that we don’t have, like, a solid leadership in place. So looking forward to having that again,

hopefully. Yeah. I was

gonna say the same thing basically that we need somebody who actually

knows what they’re doing and is gonna put their foot down. Like,

Joe Biden can even form coherent sentences

and It’s just a disaster. So we need Trump’s leadership back.

He

accomplished

a lot in the construction building industry, and he was able to get through and get things started. Now, the reason I like the guy is because everything he says is true. I can’t see anything that he makes a claim about. That’s untrue. If they could say, oh, that the pipeline, let’s say, prime example, was bad.

No. They’re coming out now and saying it lost a lot of jobs and cost a lot of money to cancel it. So everything the guy says is straightforward and it ends up being true. You know, he may embellish a lot of things just to promote himself because that’s his business. They can’t get anything on him.

I like him because he’s not a politician. And I don’t like the way they sugar coat everything and for when they talk down to us like we’re idiots. I like that he spoke like we did. He says it like it is. He doesn’t care who he makes mad, and he’s not establishment.

Because the problem is We keep getting these lifetime politicians in that are establishment. They’re all in boots together. He was an outsider and look how much we’re finding out about how shady our entire government is now because of what he brought to the

forefront.

What he said he was

gonna do, he did. You know, nobody else can say that. Right or wrong, I believe him. I’m sure he embosses. I’m sure he stretches the truth.

But if he says he’s gonna get something done, he gets it done. I also like the fact that he’s only one that really has something to lose. Right? He’s a billionaire. It’s not worth his while to take on the presidency.

You know, he has all the money. He has a small wife. He has a great family, etcetera.

It’s

more of a burdens and hindrance for him to take on the presidency. So that that makes me ask a question, why would he give it all that up unless he was definitely motivated to do so. So

the last three people you just heard in that clip were from a group where everyone said that they would vote for Trump as a third party candidate even if DeSantis were the nominee running against Joe Biden. So our poll Witt’s poll, clocked twenty eight percent of Republican primary voters taking that same position, and that was the most interesting part to me. As we’ve talked about, that gives Trump like an enormous base to work with. But one of the things that struck me, as I’ve listened now to several groups of these people who are a ride or die for Trump. Is the way they talk about Trump is basically the only person that they can think of that is against the establishment.

Like even around DeSantis who they like fine, but basically they talk a lot about this idea that there’s an establishment Republican party that they hate. And that Trump is the only one who’s taken them on, and that’s why they will follow him even if he runs an independent bid. And you know, I got some pushback when I put out the poll for people like Ross daufett being like, you know, twenty eight percent are not gonna follow Trump. To a third party if he runs against Santos. And I think that’s probably true.

Like, I think this twenty eight percent number probably continues to go down somewhat.

But there’s

a number. Is it twenty percent? Is it fifteen? Is it ten? Any of them?

Are enough to crater, as you said, to split the vote just like, I can’t remember what historical year you threw out there. Your history is better than mine. Twenty twelve. Nineteen twelve. So what do you think?

Do you think Trump would run as a third party candidate? Like, because that was the other thing. Not only would that many people not follow him, but Trump won’t do it. Now my response would be, maybe he doesn’t run as a third party candidate. Although, Trump loves to raise money.

That’s a great way to raise money, and he does not care about the Republican Party. Not one bit. Trump is the only cares about himself. He does not care about the Republican Party. And also, if somebody else gets the nomination, won’t he just trash them endlessly and drive down?

Maybe just diminish enthusiasm for whoever the candidate is. Like, how much damage can Trump do with this sort of lock on this percentage of voters? Sarah, we

need to mention one other consideration that we haven’t talked about. And that is some states have sore loser laws, where if you run for the nomination and don’t get it, then you cannot get on valid as an independent. But I think Donald Trump’s reputation and standing is sufficient. So that his forces could go to work and get him on a lot of ballots. And as you said, it doesn’t take twenty eight percent to split the Republican vote and put a Democrat in the White House.

Any significant percentage is enough given how closely balanced Republicans and Democrats are in the country as a whole. But it’s it’s fascinating to me to listen to your focus groups basically verify the numbers that we found in this survey of the people who like Trump more than the GOP ninety eight percent have a favorable view of Trump, and seventy eight of that ninety eight have a very favorable view of Trump. That is a solid base, a rock solid base that I think is not going to go anywhere even if he ran as an independent and got on the ballot in a number of states. Howard Bauchner: Yeah, I

mean, this is

the thing that I think sometimes maybe some of the political observers who don’t listen to these

voters maybe don’t understand

as the intensity of their

commitment to drop. And

the fact that they don’t really care about the Republican Party, Like, some of them might make some strategic calculations. They might sit there and think to themselves, well, I don’t want to reelect Joe Biden. You know, there’s definitely some percentage is gonna do that. But there’s a percentage of them that are like, no. You guys are a un party.

You’re all the establishment. I’m with Trump forever to the grave. Prime for my cold dead hands. And whatever that percentage is, it’s not one percent. It’s not two percent.

Like, it’s a bigger percentage than that. And I think that presents an existential threat to Republicans. And I guess my question for you and to anybody else who wants to answer it, because I’m not sure that people we’ll sort of know what to do with this. It gives him this, like, weird leverage. Right?

Like, your poll found and so many other polls have found the majority of the Republican Party wants to move on. But they

can’t move

on while thirty percent or twenty eight percent have that deep level of commitment to him because he can wield that in a lot of destructive ways. And so isn’t he kind of holding them hostage with that thirty percent or that twenty eight percent? Well,

that was the fear of a lot of more establishment Republican types in two thousand sixteen. Was it that if they tried to block him or keep him from getting into debates that he would run as an independent and split the Republican base. So, yes, I mean, I have never seen in my many many years of doing bowling, Sarah, the commitment that a particular political figure has garnered from his supporters. I mean, Trump famously said he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose any supporters I think he’s right. Yep.

I think he’s right. It is And he can certainly stage a

mini coup and not lose too many supporters. Like, I haven’t heard a single person say January sixth is their reason for being out on truck in these last sort of focus. Right. Right.

And that did not show up at all in in the open ended responses for what skepticism they had about Trump in twenty twenty four?

So in closing, ish because actually there’s like more I wanna ask you, but I wanna turn back to this selectability question. So the always Trump crowd may not think Trump is less selectable. That doesn’t mean they’re not worried he won’t win. They are worried that the election could be stolen again from Trump or from some other Republican and it removes the roadblock to supporting Trump that the maybe Trump crowd has had lately. So To be clear, what I’m saying is, is that the maybe Trump people, they don’t say that they don’t think the election was stolen anymore, but they talk about electability a lot in winning, which means there’s some tasted admission in there that Trump lost the last couple of elections.

The always trumpers are deeply committed to the idea that the election was stolen. So let’s listen.

I think in

the next election, I’m gonna do a mail in vote as early as possible. I think that is a major problem with Republicans. Because I vote in person, and I’ve always done that every time I vote. But this time, I’m thinking since they’re playing this game, I was lost because of all the mail in vote. If they had voting on election day and they saw that one debate, and he had a phenomenon or a festival would have lost.

There’s no way the guy has any capable of talent. Any reason

there were behind their names gonna have a problem. They will be keyed and all the boost They hate us in. It’s just as much as they

hate us.

Unless it was a rhino, you know, unless it was a McCain or Lish Cheney that they are willing to put up with, then they’re gonna try and crush it. They’re doing all of the forensics on this, and they’re watching the votes get flipped. They’re going to China until somebody gets all of those machines. In Pennsylvania, we had those nice big CHEANS AND YOU JUST WENT AND PULLED THE LEAVOUR AND THERE WAS A CHIEF OF PAPER THAT WAS A TRAIL. UNTIL WE GO BACK TO THAT, IT WILL ONLY BE A PROBLEM.

THE FACT that they believe that these Republicans are actually winning and that Trump actually won. It helps them not have to have that electability concern, which is guess makes some intuitive sense when you think about it. If you think that they’re just going out there and stealing elections from all these Republicans, then you just vote for the person that you like the best. And you’re not doing the armchair analysis about electability concerns. I was surprised, originally, the number of people who said that the election was stolen It kind of peaked around seventy percent.

But after twenty twenty two, it seems to be taking back down. Have you

seen that?

Yes. It’s down in in our poll fifty two percent overall, say the election was stolen from Trump. But once again, there are dramatic differences between the people who support Trump more than the GOP and those who support the GOP more than Trump. Among Trump voters, eighty five percent, say the election was stolen, and the rest say they’re not sure. Virtually no one says that Biden won fair and square.

Among the GOP more than Trump voters, they’re split into thirds. A third say Biden one fair and square. A third, think it’s stolen from Trump. And a third, say they’re not sure. Now I don’t know what more you would need to be sure.

But a third take refuge in that not sure response. So once again, you have a radically different perception on whether the election was stolen, whether you’re more Trump or more GOP? So technically,

that was supposed to be my last question, but I wanna circle back actually just pick your brain about a couple more things. Unfortunately, because I haven’t done this show in so long, I’ve got, like, an enormous amount of pent up analysis I wanna get through. And I’ve watched ten groups since twenty twenty two midterms. And one of the things I want to go back to this question of DeSantis. One of the things that was interesting to me that happened recently was watching DeSantis during the R and C election to see who would be the chair when?

Would it be Rana Rodney McDaniel, again, despite some consternation from her own party that she has presided now over many losing elections. Then she was challenged by this woman, like a real crazy person, Harvey Dillon, who has hung out a lot with the my pillow guy. She just did a lot with Carrie Lake. And around DeSantis endorsed Harvey Dillon. And I couldn’t understand why because I was, like, This guy has become a master at strategic silence.

He stays out of a lot of the big Trump related controversies. And it was pretty clear dealing was gonna lose Tarada, that ran ahead the votes. But when I

listened to

DeSantis explain why he was doing it. He said things like, we need new blood because we’ve been losing too often. He was really hitting the losing. He talked about we shouldn’t have an RNC in Washington DC in the swamp. And he he was doing this thing where it seemed to be painting.

Donald Trump, Rana, as the establishment. And I’ve talked about this a lot, you know, we at the Board have a phrase, Tim Miller, came up with it called the Magna Establishment. Just kind of the

the Kevin McCarthy, Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Green on Holy Alliance, like Forbes, this MAGA establishment. And so do you see Rhonda Santos lining up like an outsider strategy? Because it’s funny. There’s this tension between the way a lot of the sort of maybe Trumpers view DeSantis as a more electable, more polished, maybe more mainstream version of Trump. But that

DeSantis seems to be building a profile that is meant to be as base friendly as possible that he is trying to sort of outflank Trump not on the right per se, but, like, on the outsider fringey stuff. Do you see that or am I making that up?

No. No. I think you’re on the money there. I think he’s developing a sort of outsider versus the establishment type and and you’ve been the president of the United States. I guess that makes you the establishment.

Doesn’t it? Not in the eyes of Trump voters, but I do think that’s It’s an interesting strategy that he’s starting to develop. And

it’s interesting just because listening to the

always Trumpers,

what they love about Trump is that he took on the Republican establishment. The deep state. And so I get that’s right. The deep state, but also Mitch McConnell. Right?

Like, the number of ads Republicans ran in twenty twenty two against Mitch McConnell, against leaders in their own party was pretty weird. And I guess I see DeSantis kind of trying to get at the always trumpeters. By being like, no, Trump’s the establishment now, and I hate the establishment more. But it’s funny because actually a lot of the swing voters or even the the sort of more Navy Trumpers, they see DeSantis as more mainstream I they don’t use the word establishment. I don’t think anybody’s used that word, but I think they would see him as more of a normal politician.

And so I guess I find that dynamic shaping up very interesting.

I agree. And I think as I said, Rhonda Sanders is a very smart, very savvy guy. And if it’s possible to peel off any of those always Trump people, I think you’ll figure out how to do it. I’m just not sure it’s possible.

Okay. Last sort of hot seat

question, and

then I really will wrap up. I’ve been struggling with the DeSantis. Trump,

match up because if

I were my twenty fifteen self and Rhonda Santos was acting the way Rhonda Santos does right now, when he was running for president, I wouldn’t like him one bit. I would have no interest in seeing him become the nominee.

Now,

I got a way Right now, the fact that Donald Trump did a coup, tried to overturn an election, and Romney has not done that. And so while I think Rondesantis is really, really a bad candidate, I don’t see him as the same kind of existential threat that I see Trump as. But do you feel like an election of Rhonda Santos? And don’t let my opinion forget my opinion of this. Does in your opinion the election of technologists represent the moving on to something better than Trump or is it just moving on to kinda Trump without the same kind of baggage.

Like, a slightly more I don’t know. I don’t know. Like, in the frame of those governors, Like I see, like, Trump without the legal problems? Or do you think he represents a significant shift away from the dangers that Trump represented? Like, deep down, he’s a relatively normal guy that you don’t have to be so afraid of.

I

think that Rhonda Santis has an unairing year for what motivates base Republican voters today. And I think he is the kind of candidate that if he performs as well at the presidential level as he did at the state level, that could really unite the Republican Party. Now, I need to tell the story that my first presidential candidate Lamar Alexander told me he said going from a statewide race to the presidential race is like going from eighth grade basketball to the NBA finals. It is a completely different level of scrutiny. But if he can successfully make that transition, I do think he’s got the persona and the ability to unite the party And as I said, he was been careful not to say that the twenty twenty election was stolen.

He’s hinted at by his election integrity stuff, but he’s never said the election was stolen. So in that sense, he would be a more, quote, normal, unquote, kind of Republic in Canada. Yeah.

Like, I agree. I I think he’s shrewd enough that he tries to keep his his avenues open, but he he’s like the only one who went in the campaign with Doug Mastriano. The most insane. And there was, like, a lot of competition. But the singularly most insane candidate in the twenty twenty two cycle he went and he campaigned with Kerry Lake you know, soda Glen Youngkin.

I mean, there there didn’t seem to be too much from a lot of these candidates a sense of, like, boy, I need to stay away from Hirschfield Walker. I need to stay away from Cary Lake. I need to stay away from Tudor, Dixon, like, they all went all in. And so, I don’t know. I don’t quite give them the pass on while he’s managed to to not utter the words the election was stolen, but I take your point that he is playing a different game.

He is trying to give himself room to maneuver in a general election for sure. Right. With heirs, thank you so much for joining us, and thank you all for listening to focus group podcast, please go rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. These Wednesday episodes are not gonna be a regular thing like I We’ll be back on Saturday, February eleventh, and we will see you then. Sarah, thank

you very much.