A new poll of Republican Party voters says a lot about the party’s potential candidates in the 2024 presidential election. The key takeaway is that not even GOP voters are particularly excited about any of them.
In response to the question, “If the 2024 Republican primary were being held today, for whom would you vote?” not a single candidate secured a majority of the respondents.
Former President Donald Trump led the polling, as you might expect, but only received 48% support.
From there, things went from dismal to worse for Republican candidates. Former Vice President Mike Pence drew 13%, followed by Donald Trump Jr. at 7%. Nobody else in the Politico/Morning Consult poll got better than 4% support. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri was among those registering 0% support, with Hawley being the choice of exactly two of the 657 respondents. That had to be a disappointment to the senator, who’s fronting as some kind of ultimate warrior for Trumpism after his very visible role in rallying the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrectionists.
The polling results offer a glimmer of hope for upcoming elections. The leading GOP candidates can’t even win over the majority of voters in their own party, much less the American electorate at large.
The outcome suggests that some Americans in the Republican Party may be rejecting the cult of personality that the GOP leadership has become. Trump once had overwhelming support from Republican voters; now this poll shows him limping along at less than 50%. And the others barely made a blip.
That said, all but one of the candidates named in the survey — Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the party’s 2012 nominee — is regarded as a Trump loyalist/supporter. Combined with polls showing that a majority of Republicans still believe the GOP’s big lie about election fraud in 2020, it appears that GOP voters as a group are a long way from demanding a course change by the party.
But the primary poll suggests there could be cracks in the Republicans’ seemingly monolithic attack on truth and democracy, with some voters possibly feeling that enough is enough. They certainly didn’t seem crazy about any of these candidates, who except for Romney are all-in on the party’s swing to the extremist fringe.
With the GOP opposing federal legislation to ensure fair elections and voter access, and working in states across the country to suppress the vote and twist the rules to their advantage, it’s invigorating to think that some Republican voters are ready to pump the brakes on the party’s slide toward authoritarianism.
If they’re ready to do that, America is in for better days ahead. The party’s efforts to suppress the vote, sabotage fair elections, rewrite the rules to tilt permanently in their favor and establish minority rule amount to an all-out assault on democracy.
The nation needs at least two parties, as democracy thrives when decisions are formed with input and ideas from individuals representing different communities and ideologies. But the current Republican Party leadership, in crossing over into the extremist fringe, is now a threat to our future as a majority-rule nation that serves the will of the people at large.
It must be brought under control and moved back toward responsibility.
For Americans yearning for an end to the GOP’s madness, the poll offers a sprout of green coming through the concrete. It’s nowhere near a meadow of hope yet, but it’s an encouraging sign.