But they’re not undecided in the sense that they don’t know who these people are and will have to make up their minds. Again, these are people who are sort of recoiling at the thought of having to choose between these two, and maybe not even getting to the point where they can tell us the decision that not only they made last time but that they’ll make again. And there’s also risk, of course, that they really don’t vote or vote for someone else, https://www.gclub.co/royal1688-play-baccarat-casino-direct-site/ a third-party candidate, as an expression of that dissatisfaction. I think that the strength is his ability to dominate the Republican field and the national media conversation. In our poll, we asked voters to tell us whether a word described Trump or DeSantis better, and Trump’s best result on that was “strong leader.” 69 percent of Republicans said that described Trump best, 22 percent said DeSantis. And I think that gets at the whole thing.
So there are cracks there that, hypothetically, could lead them to support someone else if the circumstances permitted it. It’s much larger than the lead that Donald Trump ever had in the last Republican primary. It’s bigger than any of the leads that Hillary Clinton had in 2016 or 2008.
And then, perhaps it’s also that DeSantis owned a unique set of powerful issues that appealed to Republicans, like coronavirus and the fight against woke. And I don’t think our poll provides any reason to believe that those things are working for him today. Republican voters, as I mentioned earlier — they think that Donald Trump is likely to beat Joe Biden than Ron DeSantis, even though Trump lost last time, and even though Trump’s candidates lost the midterms. A majority of voters don’t have a favorable impression of Joe Biden. A majority of voters think that Joe Biden has not done a good job as president. And so there’s a lot of voters who, when confronted with this Biden-versus-Trump matchup, they simply seize up, in polling terms, I suppose.
In a lot of ways, they’re broadly representative of all Republicans. And we didn’t really talk very much about the makeup of the MAGA base, but the MAGA base is very populist. Top line, we found Donald Trump doing really well. He had 54 percent of Republican primary voters to 17 percent for Ron DeSantis. The conflict escalated when a group of about six Black men from the riverboat confronted the white party. Cheered on by bystanders, they beat three white men and two women, at least one of whom could be seen first striking others by running up and throwing her body into them from behind.
I mean, ordinarily, talking about the general election 15 months out might be a little ridiculous, but we’ve had this election before. So Nate, “The Times” did a second poll. We just talked about the poll of Republican primary voters. You all simultaneously did a poll of a potential general election in which Trump faces Joe Biden. They think Trump is likelier to get things done than Ron DeSantis, even though Ron DeSantis would seem to have a very impressive set of conservative policy accomplishments.
The second bucket, I think, is Biden’s age. And these are Democrats, who presumably should be giving Biden the benefit of the doubt on all of this stuff. What you seem to be saying is that President Biden hasn’t found a way to exploit Trump’s weaknesses, because he has his own real weaknesses as a candidate. But let’s really explore what those weaknesses are and how they emerge in the poll. This is a weird thing to say, Michael, but I think that if you take all of these poll results at face value, it adds up to a comprehensive takedown of the DeSantis theory of this race, the DeSantis theory of how they can win this election. Now, they’re backing Donald Trump over the alternatives, so they’re not an automatic vote against him.
- It’s bigger than any of the leads that Hillary Clinton had in 2016 or 2008.
- So although these are small samples, they’re part of a story that I think we know is already unfolding.
- They still have views that align with the Republican Party as a whole, but they’re not all in one camp.
- And just to be clear, we do not believe that any of the people in the Democratic race, like your RFK Juniors, are meaningful challengers to Biden at this moment.
So even among this group of voters, who — again, they’re willing to say that DeSantis may be more moral than Trump. But they also reject the idea that Trump has committed serious federal crimes. And they also believe that Republicans ought to stand behind Trump in the face of these allegations.
As a result, he was forced to wear the same outfit to the show every day for an entire week. Montgomery’s mayor, Steven Reed, said in a statement on Sunday that several people involved in the fighting on Saturday evening have been detained. The brawl appeared to start when a pontoon boat prevented a larger river boat from docking. When a Black riverboat worker objected, he was attacked by a group of white men. Walters, who was convicted in 2017 of insider trading on the Dean Foods stock, says he believes that if Mickelson had testified a “simple truth,” that he would not have faced time in prison.
It shows the president and the former president still tied among registered voters, each at 43 percent. The third issue is a little bit different from the first two, and that’s that Biden is not faring well, by traditional Democratic standards, among Black and Hispanic voters. Among all registered voters, Biden only has a 71-to-12 lead among Black voters, and he’s only up 41 to 38 among Hispanic voters. Polls will have margin of errors ordinarily, and then when you drill down into smaller groups, those margin of errors get even bigger.
You can say that Hunter Biden and Joe Biden are also involved in criminal conspiracies. You can continue to appear as a vigorous and energetic candidate that maybe offers a strong contrast to Joe Biden’s age. And right now, if the election is about who they dislike the least, it’s really good for Joe Biden. I mean, this is a group that’s very hostile towards Donald Trump, even if it doesn’t love Joe Biden by any stretch. So this could ultimately be a decisive group of voters in a general election matchup between Trump and Biden.
But there’s not much reason to think this third indictment will change that view among these voters. And to this point, they have seen their guy as under attack and want to rally to his defense, not that they see something wrong on Trump’s part and that they should distance themselves from him. Only 2 percent said that he did, quote, “something wrong.” So this isn’t a case where there are loyal Trump supporters that acknowledge his wrongdoing but still support him anyway because of his views on the issues or because they’re loyal to him. They don’t accept the premise that he’s done something wrong here. And that, obviously, goes a long way to explaining why they continue to support him. A new set of Times polls has answers to those questions.