By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content, my Linktree with all my public links/profiles) January 15, 2024; minor cleanup/grammar edits and a few links added for sourcing; see my related podcast; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. Also, Brian is running for U.S. Senate for Maryland and you can learn about his campaign here.
SILVER SPRING, WASHINGTON, and AMTRAK—Insurrectionist Donald Trump is going to win at least three out of four states—perhaps all four—in the early contests of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and even South Carolina, where Nikki Haley, emerging-top-rival of Trump, was governor there for years. But her past leadership in her home state cannot save her candidacy, nor can a potential victory in New Hampshire. Much like some looked to DeSantis as some savior who would deliver them from Trump and is now flopping on the shore like a fish left out by a receding tide, the hype around Haley will end in the same way every Republican challenger’s attempt to take on Trump has: abject failure without it being even close.
Two main facts are obvious in this Republican race, apart from the most obvious other two, being that Trump holds the Republican Party in his thrall like take-your-pick-of-a-deranged-cult-leader and, secondly, that criticizing the Dear Leader is not a path to victory. The other, if lesser obvious truths, are that anyone even perceived as a moderate by this fascist mob is not going to win the nomination and that Trump 2.0 or 3.0 will also not win so long as the original model is still functional and can riff on his greatest hits. In the first of the last two points, I am, of course, referencing Nikki Haley, who can only be called a moderate in the most relative of senses and still either panders to or embraces enough of the insidious nature of Trumpism to still be fairly viewed as extremist in her own right, if only less so than the Dear Leader and his would be successors aping and flailing wildly in various remixes of their inspiration’s horrific hits.
The wheels are in motion as of today in another gear, and, as of the last Selzer poll—as in Ann Selzer, consistently the best in the business—the fate seems to be sealed given the trajectory of moving parts and their positions, save for a freak fluke possibility of a collective series of polling failures that would make 2016 look near-flawless. We should expect no tectonic shifts other than the spasms of the two former governors Haley and DeSantis as they fight their desperate, losing battles to become president (and who knows what Ramaswamy will do but since his actions carry even far less weight, unless they land him the vice presidential nod, so I will refrain from using “tectonic” to describe anything he does). They may try to reinvent themselves several times in the coming weeks and months, hoping to throw something against the wall that will actually stick, if they even last that long. Republicans and conservatives who are actually decent, principled people—the Kinzinger-Cheney-Kristol-Kasich-George Conway (certainly not Kellyanne)-“wing” (if it can even be called that? More like feathers) of what was once the Republican Party will throw all their weight behind Haley, a last good-faith but sad attempt to put off the near-inevitable, and, unless something severely impacts the health or state-of-being-alive of Trump, they will fail.
Why am I so certain of this? It’s time to read the tea leaves, starting with Selzer’s excellent brew.
Trump comes in strong at 48% of likely caucus-goers (down from 51% in the previous poll in this series), followed by Haley far below at 20% (but bouncing up from 16% and surpassing DeSantis), followed by DeSantis at 16% (falling to third from 19%), in turn followed by Ramaswamy at 8% (up from 5%); nobody else was above 1%. While this would seem to suggest that Haley has dethroned DeSantis, there is further underlying data that would put such an assumption on, as Selzer herself put it, “shaky ground.”
As it turns out, Haley has an enormous enthusiasm gap with Trump but also a pretty bad one with DeSantis. Especially considering how caucuses are far longer and more taxing (indeed: annoying, inappropriate, and even obscene) affairs, and given how enthusiasm has generally been a factor leading to gross undemocratic overrepresentation for candidates with the most enthusiastic supporters compared to just people voting in primaries in far simpler processes (hello, Bernie Sanders!) even without historically awful weather being a problem, the record cold for any Iowa caucus tonight could really present a problem for a candidate trailing behind significantly in enthusiasm (we are talking as cold as a wind chill of -45F).
And the numbers for Haley on enthusiasm are horrific for such a scenario, as the extremely/very enthusiastic breakdown is as follows: Trump supporters 49%/39%; DeSantis people 23%/39%; Haley folks 9%/30%. Other metrics show the precariousness of her second-place spot. For one, her favorability among likely “caucusgoers” is also an issue: she comes in fourth at 48% favorable, behind Trump (69%), DeSantis (58%), and Ramaswamy (52%), while she had the worst favorable among the four, too (Trump: 29%, DeSantis and Ramaswamy at 36%, Haley far behind at 46%). She also lags similarly as a second choice, with 20% picking DeSantis for second, 18% Ramaswamy, and just 14% Haley (Trump was lower at 12% but that that makes sense since he has so many more supporters than the other three, more than them combined). And while only 18% of Trump supporters were willing to change their mind, Haley was two-points behind DeSantis (35%) at 37%. While some of these statistics are admittedly close and within the margin of error, the overall picture is rather dire for Haley: apart from being a first choice, she lags behind not only Trump but also both DeSantis and Ramaswamy in all of these categories (the only exception being Trump’s lower second choice, with a twenty-eight point lead over Haley, the next closest first choice and so many fewer people able to pick him as a first choice).
So for me, the most likely scenario is a Trump blowout that exceeds his polling numbers (think of a significant chunk of Haley supporters not braving the cold and diluting the field to increase support for other candidates compared to if her folks did show up) and a meek DeSantis second-place finish. It’s possible for her to still beat DeSantis but not Trump, while, conversely but also less likely though still possible, Ramaswamy could stun her and sneak up from behind or come close to her if she has a particularly bad night. I wouldn’t bet on him overtaking her but Ramaswamy could be something of an x-factor: he and Trump and DeSantis are all far more like each other than they are anything like Haley. And while it’s theoretically possible for each to take support from each other, I don’t think DeSantis would gain from either of them but could lose caucusgoers to either. Think of it this way: if you want something like Trump but with some sense of novelty, say, being much being younger and nonwhite (with Ramaswamy’s racist platform he gives racists an excuse to say they aren’t “racist” by supporting him, something Haley does, too, but in much more subtle and somewhat less awful ways). Thus, Ramaswamy probably has a better chance to take support from DeSantis than the other way around and he is more similar to Trump. Yet especially after Trump’s attack against Ramaswamy and the latter’s obsequious reply, I still can see some of Trump’s and Ramaswamy’s supporters switching from one to the other for various reasons, and wouldn’t be surprised to see either do a little lower or a little better at the expense of the other.
If DeSantis has a better than expected night, it could be in part because undecideds break towards him. And therein is the other x-factor: I don’t know how the undecideds could vote in a way that could switch the polls significantly away from the first-choice percentages we have in this polls (as I don’t know, not can’t imagine). Even factoring this all in, I still say Trump is going to win by a lot, Haley is most likely to come in third, with DeSantis coming in second (those two likely to be somewhat close or perhaps even closer than somewhat close) and Ramaswamy fourth. I don’t see Ramaswamy overcoming DeSantis no matter where Haley is. And the best DeSantis can hope for out of the first four contests are two distant second-places and two distant-thirds. In other words, he’s done even before the voting starts. Haley has a real shot to win New Hampshire but very, very little chance to win her own state, and won’t even place in Nevada (more on that in a bit).
No matter how you look at it, it truly does seem a struggle for Miss Congeniality, a struggle for dominance among the irrelevant, though perhaps it will impact the veepstakes since Trump often thinks in the crude and simple terms of pure who-beat-who. The only real hiccup for him in Iowa would be if some rural voters are in areas where earlier blizzard snows have not been cleared have trouble making it to caucus sites, but I imagine Iowa authorities doing everything they can to clear them, given how this is essentially Iowa’s World Cup and just about the only time Iowa is ever in the limelight. I wouldn’t even be surprised if enthusiastic Trump supporters organize shoveling missions or private plows, if it came to that.
The media will focus on the horserace aspect and so will Trump, but given the small number of delegates at stake, it’s quite possible Haley, DeSantis, and Ramaswamy all tie or essentially tie in the final delegates they will be awarded here, far behind Trump. If Haley comes in second but has the same or only one or a few more delegates than DeSantis or even Ramaswamy, that could lead to many shrugging her off as a candidate as they think down the long-road and how she couldn’t get a significant delegate edge over her closest rivals, with Trump looking down from on high with a big fat delegate lead. The best result for Haley would be a strong second with a strong gap over DeSantis and a significant delegate lead over everyone but Trump, but that seems to me to be wishful (if hardly impossible) thinking for her based on everything I have discussed above.
Looking ahead, New Hampshire is, simply put, not Ron DeSantis or Vivek Ramaswamy Country. So even if they do relatively “well” in Iowa, I don’t expect that to translate into any significant momentum for them in the next contest. And given that and Trump’s overwhelming popularity among likely Nevada caucusgoers, and that Trump will have at least one big win under his belt by Nevada, he will blow out all his competition there and that will provide momentum for him heading into South Carolina. And in a tremendous oversight by Haley and her campaign staff, she is not on the eligible for Nevada’s caucuses. See, Nevada state legislators, copying what the smart Democrats of Iowa did, scrapped the caucus as a way of awarding delegates to candidates. Nevada’s Democrats pushed for a more democratic and fair primary, and all primaries are run by state governments while caucuses are run by state parties. The Nevada Republican Party resisted this move and decided to stick with its caucuses, making its caucus the only way to win delegates. Haley opted to go with the primary, meaning she cannot win any delegates in the binding-for-delegates caucuses and will be a nonfactor there. This, in turn, means she will sail into South Carolina having been unable to win any delegates in Nevada. And, again, keep in mind, Iowa has nearly twice as many delegates at stake (40) to New Hampshire’s 22, and while both Iowa’s and South Carolina’s Republican voters have some similarities to each other and very little in common with New Hampshire voters, and with Nevada being kind of a weirdo state in a way that is different from New Hampshire being a weirdo state (neither meant in an offensive way, dear readers from both states!), the point is, while there will be a lot of talk about “momentum,” it is very difficult to see how Haley would get any real “momentum” that would impact things in South Carolina decisively, let along Nevada or in most Super Tuesday states, even if she won New Hampshire, while it is hardly absurd to think that a strong Trump performance in Iowa would not transfer over to a state like South Carolina that shares some of its traits.
Trump will enter Super Tuesday without any real competitor in terms of wins, delegates, or standings in the polls, and that’s doesn’t leave anyone a path to overtaking Trump that doesn’t involve a major health issue that hits Trump. If he’s still the Trump we know by the convention, he will be the nominee for his fascist personality cult that we still quaintly refer to as the “Republican Party.”
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