The part-time left (Never-Trumpers) and the full-time left have been working the Trump-popularity-decline narrative for a while. Convince people he’s old news or toxic in hopes the deplorables will move on to something more to the establishments liking. Yeah, that’s not working.
The latest Harvard-Harris poll is just a poll. It is far too early to take any of this seriously. Unless, as I noted above, we look at the context of Trump as old news or toxic. The GOP “wingers” carrying water for the left have some work to do because, contrary to the narrative Trump supporters are not leaving their guy.
Donald Trump: 46%
Ron DeSantis: 23%
Mike Pence: 7%
Nikki Haley: 6%
Mike Pompeo: 3%
Marco Rubio: 2%
Ted Cruz: 1%
Tim Scott: 1%
This is brutal. Where’s the decline? Are there already too many not-Trump candidates diluting the field?
Apparently not. In a head-to-head between Trump and Desantis, the Donald still had a commanding 12-point lead.
Donald Trump: 56%
Ron DeSantis: 44%
To be fair to DeSantis he has not announced he is running and that makes a difference. Building state-level campaign apparatus drives interest and moves needles. And while Florida Ron is well known in our circles most regular Republicans won’t know much about him beyond the bad things they read or hear from the media.
Having said that, the poll is still a kick in the teeth. The folks who take polls are not necessarily the same demographic as the folks who swim on the right side of the blogosphere and Trump is up 23 points.
The survey also showed results for a hypothetical general election between Trump and President Joe Biden, showing Trump winning with 46% to Biden’s 41%; 13% of respondents couldn’t decide on either candidate.
That’s not near enough of a spread to beat the cheatin’ Left in a Federal race. Trump would need to be 23 points up and then some in those key swing states that like to discover ballots in the wee hours.
There is a ton of stuff in this poll, including that Democrats would pick Biden as their nominee if the primary was today. Absent Biden in that race, their top pick is Kamal Harris (yikes!), followed by Hillary Clinton (zoinks!), and then Bernie Sanders.
One more point: If New Hampshire Gubnuh Snoonoo jumps in, as we expect, where does he land in this list of “plorables” (see what I did there)? Can he possibly poll better than Rubio or Cruz, who have national name recognition, and if so, why or why not?