Talking politics these days, no one needs analysis, they just want answers. We know Donald Trump. We know Joe Biden. We know most of America doesn’t want to replay 2020, but can’t be bothered shifting off of its duff to go to the primaries to vote for someone else (15 percent, Iowa, really??).
We talked to Real Clear Politics senior elections analyst (and our AEI colleague) Sean Trende for this week’s pod. So let’s get to the issues neatly and tidily in Q&A format:
What happened in Iowa? Trump won.
What’s going to happen in New Hampshire? Trump will almost certainly win.
Can Nikki Haley survive a distant second place showing? Maybe, but only if she goes on to win her own state of South Carolina, where she is trailing in the polls, big time.
Can Ron DeSantis survive coming in last in New Hampshire? Sure. But he has no path to the presidency.
Will the close to 100 counts against the Donald matter? Probably not.
Will Trump win in November? He could.
What will it mean? Who the hell knows. Trump has no principles, no vision, no center other than how Donald Trump feels at that moment in time.
Will there be a third party in the elections? No Labels Co-Chair Pat McCrory says if it’s Biden vs Trump, then yes, 100 percent.
Will No Labels get on the ballot nationwide? Not if lefty movement organizations can help it.
Do the What the Hell people have a crystal ball? No. But you won’t find a serious political commentator who will answer any differently than above. Listen to the pod with Sean Trende and see.
And now you know why we can’t have nice things.
HIGHLIGHTS
So, Trump swept Iowa.
ST: My takeaway is that this thing is pretty much done. I don't know if never Trump is the right term because I think most true never Trumpers are basically Democrats at this point. But what the kind of want a Trump alternative folks really needed was Trump to end up underneath 50% and Nikki Haley to be in second. And neither of those things happened. And kind of making it even worse, Vivek Ramaswamy, who isn't taking a huge vote share, but he's almost certainly taking them mostly out of Trump, dropped out and endorsed Trump. So, I mean, it's tough to see the Trump alternatives path to the nomination, but if one exists, we're going to find out in a week or so in New Hampshire.
Where would DeSantis’ vote go in New Hampshire if he was third in Iowa?
ST: The question is, would DeSantis have gone ahead and stayed? And the reason Haley really needed to be second was just from a momentum standpoint. She takes that into New Hampshire and she's positioned as a viable Trump alternative. I think she still probably is seen that way, but it's just, she kind of needs everything to go right for her.
But Americans really want Trump?
ST: We should at some point come back to the fact that he's polling better in the general election head to head than he has in eight years. But putting that aside, the bottom line and the problem that people wanting a Trump alternative had all along is that Donald Trump is popular among Republicans, and it's hard to convince people to go for an alternative, an unknown when they have someone that for whatever reason they like right in front of them. I think there were lines that people could have taken. I think DeSantis could have positioned himself a little better, but frankly, I think as soon as the indictments came down, there was a rally around the Trump effect and it just became really, really difficult for an alternative to emerge.
What is the narrow path for Haley?
ST: She has to win New Hampshire, maybe come in a very close second, like a point or two behind Trump. But for all, I think she has to win, and that does perhaps give her a head of steam coming into her home state, and then she'd probably have to win that as well. So if that were to happen, Trump is wounded, we can start talking about how the future states line up for her. And I think that's about it. I don't really see the path for DeSantis. I just don't see it.
DeSantis won second in Iowa — is it enough to give him a boost?
ST: The problem is he positioned himself as Ted Cruz, which isn't really where he needed to be. I think a lot of Haley supporters at this point, given how DeSantis has played the race, are going to look at Trump and DeSantis and kind of be like... Some of them will be like anyone but Trump, fine DeSantis. But some of them are going to be like, "I don't see the difference. I'll just vote Democrat." And that's what makes it tough for him.
How does Haley look going into her home state?
ST: The polling for her in South Carolina has not been good. It's looked a lot like the polling in Iowa. So what you would really need... We don't know. We haven't had post Christie polling, South Carolina's lightly polled, and maybe if she wins New Hampshire, people start to see her as viable. And people come home, remember what she was like as governor and so forth. If she doesn't win South Carolina, I think it's basically over, right? You can't lose your home state in an early primary and become the nominee.
And what about Super Tuesday look like for DeSantis?
ST: Again, I'm just not a believer in DeSantis. I'm not entirely sure what his path would look like at all. For Haley, look, if Haley wins New Hampshire and then she wins South Carolina, I think all bets are off. I genuinely do. Because that would mean that she won in a state a lot of northern libertarian types, which would play well in some of these other states that have a large suburban Republican presence, and then she won in a place like South Carolina that has a lot of populist Republicans.
If Trump wins New Hampshire, its all over?
ST: Yeah. Look, if you win the first two primaries, you're the nominee. I don't think that's ever not been the case. I do think there is some genuine suspense about New Hampshire. Now, who knows. As I drive in, maybe we'll get a dump of polls showing him up 30 points in New Hampshire. But based on what we've seen with the polling with Christie still in, yeah, you can absolutely see a path where Haley gets Christie's voters and there's some turnout differential and she wins New Hampshire. That is not pie in the sky. That's maybe a one in four chance.
Imagine a Haley-Biden matchup?
ST: She's taken some stances that would come back to haunt her in the general election, right? Like the social security stuff. I know that it's very popular at AEI. It's something that I think needs to be addressed, but it's general election poison, especially with the type of voters that Trump brought over, working class people, social security is their retirement. So we don't know what those numbers look like as the general election comes out, as their stances on abortions comes center stage. But she doesn't have the baggage of Donald Trump and she doesn't have the personality of Ron DeSantis. They all have their drawbacks for the general election but yeah, I think she's the strongest.
What about a third party, No Labels?
ST: So I think the no-labels strategy ultimately were they to field the candidate, wouldn't necessarily be to win outright, right? There's an interesting article today by Salena Zito pointing out that for a third party candidate to either win or majorly affect the process, all it has to do is win a few states in a close election because in that scenario it goes to the House of Representatives. And at that point, all bets are off. If no one gets a clean majority of the electoral college, the House decides. And so that's kind of how No Labels can probably be a player. Now look how they're going to do it at this point, it has to be... Because you're looking at someone who's going to have to raise a billion dollars in 10 months. So it's going to have to either be someone who can self-fund or kind of an established political candidate. But I think that's probably the way that that candidacy would have to play out.
Is a serious third-party candidate just crazy talk?
ST: I don't think that's crazy. I think if there's a year it's going to happen, it's this year, right? And part of the reason that Ross Perot caught fire was a similar situation. People didn't like George HW Bush. They didn't care for Clinton or didn't trust Clinton. And the guy got 20% of the vote even after he dropped out. But the reason Perot worked was that he was genuinely a nonpartisan candidate. And that's the problem with a Chris Sununu, is ultimately he has the R after his name. So it's tough. It's tough because at a certain point if he's just another Republican, he doesn't take that many Democrats from Joe Biden's coalition. And maybe playing spoiler is fine. Where it really gets tricky though is if Joe Biden... I don't think there's really probably a route for winning the popular vote with No Labels.
But would a third party candidate peel off votes from Trump challengers?
ST: Well, so it's done by state delegation and it's the new House that does it. So it's not clear Republicans are going to control a majority of the delegations or the Democrats will, because there's some states that will have tied delegations. All you would need to do, even if you don't, is go to the members of the House from the states that the no-labels candidate carried and say, "Look, your state voted for the no-labels candidate. How are you not going to, at least on the first ballot, cast your delegations votes for the no-labels guy who won your state?"
The Trump trials… do they mean anything?
ST: There was an ongoing joke during Trump's presidency, "The walls are closing in." Every time something would drop that would seem to kill him, his supporters would be like, "Oh, no, the walls are closing in on him." And that's how I feel about these trials at this point. It's like, yeah, of course, if he was brandishing classified documents in front and showing Kid Rock Chinese missile silos, of course he should go to jail and not be president. But I would've thought that sleeping with a porn star while your wife was pregnant would disqualify you. For that matter, I would've thought that sleeping with your intern while you're taking calls with Yasser Arafat would cause you to resign.
Bottom line up front?
ST: It doesn't bring me great joy to say it, but if the election were held today, Trump would win and probably fairly handily. He's polling the best he has in his entire career as a presidential candidate. So what's it going to look like in November of this year after we have the trials, after he's gone on stage doing his Trump thing and insulting people he doesn't need to insult? It's hard to say and it should be close, given how unpopular Joe Biden is, but it very well may not be close. Trump might win the popular vote by a few points in the electoral college, as he would say, "bigly".
Full transcript here.
SHOWNOTES
General election polling – RCP
5 Takeaways From Trump’s Runaway Victory in the Iowa Caucuses (NYT, January 16 2024)
Axios breakdown of candidate campaign strategy
DeSantis’s Iowa Letdown: A Distant Second Place Behind Trump (NYT, January 16 2024)
Nikki Haley, After Finishing Third in Iowa, Calls It a Two-Person Race (WSJ, January 16 2024)
Trump Sets Sights on New Hampshire and Haley as Pressure Mounts for DeSantis (WSJ, January 16 2024)
CNN Poll: Haley trims Trump’s lead to single digits in New Hampshire (CNN, January 9 2024)
Biden and Democrats look to frame Trump’s Iowa victory in their own terms. (NYT, January 16 2024)
Biden after Trump’s Iowa win: “He’s the clear front runner on the other side” (Axios, January 16 2024)