Polls continue to show Donald Trump with a massive lead over his competition for the Republican presidential nomination. Yet, many of his opponents continue to hold their fire against the former president. They may be doing so in hopes of eliminating all their non-Trump competition before taking on Trump himself.
The problem with this plan is that it won’t work. Trump’s rivals have to do something different to knock him off his perch. Unlike in 2016, when there were signs that he could be defeated in a one-on-one contest (which never actually happened), Trump holds major advantages this time around.
He’s up by more than 40 points nationally when polled against his closest rivals (Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley). More than that, he is pulling in greater than 60% of the Republican vote. Even if his rivals were able to consolidate into one super candidate, Trump would still win majority support.
This is very different from where we were at this point in the 2016 cycle. Trump was getting somewhere around 25% to 30% of the GOP vote nationally.
Additionally, it’s not at all clear that any of his 2024 rivals can unite the Republican primary voters not supporting Trump. Consider a Marquette University Law School poll from last month.
Trump corralled 57% of the vote in this national survey when matched up against all of his GOP competitors. When facing just DeSantis, Trump’s support jumped to 65%. When matched up with just Haley, he got to 70% of the vote.
We didn’t see such numbers in 2016, when Trump was on his way to locking up the GOP nomination. As late as March 2016, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found Trump trailing both Marco Rubio (51% to 45%) and Ted Cruz (54% to 41%) in hypothetical one-on-one polling.
That is, there was a legitimate argument back then for Trump’s rivals hoping to become the last candidate standing…
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