Trump might have already snatched the primary, poll finds

The race to become the 2024 Republican Party presidential nomination might be all but over according to new polling data that looked at the opinions of GOP county chairs from across the United States. 

When Donald Trump announced his intention to run for the presidency again it wasn’t a sure thing that he would be easily slotted into the Republican nomination. Others in the race had a good chance. 

Chief among Trump’s rivals was Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who was touted as a leader that could return the former president’s popular policies back to government but without all the drama. 

DeSantis actually had a shot at snatching the nomination away from Trump, and at one point in December 2022, DeSantis was leading Trump in one Wall Street Journal poll by a 52% to 32% margin. 

However, the opportunity to put an end to a Trump nomination is likely over according to new polling from the Director of the Center for American Politics Seth Masket. 

Masket is a professor of political science at the University of Denver and has been surveying the country’s Republican county chairs in order to get a better understanding of the primary and where it could or would go.

Masket has been surveying party chairs across the country because, as he put it in an article that he wrote for Politico, they are “figures who play a key role in shaping the race.” 

Republican Party county chairs are “highly attentive to the party’s internal dynamics and are influential in local GOP circles,” Masket wrote, adding that their endorsements mattered in the nomination race. 

“They’re also still close to the rank-and-file grassroots, and their shifts are likely to signal where the rest of the party is going,” Masket continued, which is what makes their views a good guiding standard. 

Masket noted that his ongoing polling of Republican county chairs had revealed a large portion of undecided respondents, which meant that there was an opportunity for nearly anyone to win the primary. But that's changed as of his most recent polling.

Previously uncommitted county chairs are “coming off the fence” according to Masket, and they're decided to back Donald Trump, which means the race could be all over now in light of the polling. 

Masket explained that when he launched his poll in February, Trump was nearly dead even with DeSantis among country chairs. But the most recent survey data showed Trump was up 37% while DeSantis was down to 9%. 

More importantly, the percentage of uncommitted county chairs—which had remained around 50%—dropped down to 39% in Masket’s recent polling. This is bad news for anyone who is hoping for a Trump alternative. 

“The world has turned upside down, and I feel if conservatives fail to get a ‘draw the line in the sand’ president we will lose our country, our democracy, and our republic,” one of the surveyed county chairs told Masket about his decision to back Trump.

As of November 11th, FiveThirtyEight’s GOP nomination polling averages put Trump at 56.6% of the vote while his next closest competitor—Ron DeSantis—sat at 14.1% of the vote, which means the former president had a 42.5% lead.

“The campaign isn’t over,” Masket concluded in his article, “DeSantis is still in a solid position in the sense that many chairs remain interested in him and—despite substantial criticism from other candidates and negative media coverage—very few chairs are opposed to him.”