Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...
McCay Coppins at The Atlantic peeks into some recent focus groups looking at Pence 2024:
Organized by the political consultant Sarah Longwell, the groups consisted of Republican voters who supported Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020. The participants were all over the country—suburban Atlanta, rural Illinois, San Diego—and they varied in their current opinions of Trump. In some cases, Longwell filtered for voters who should be in Pence’s target demographic. One group consisted entirely of two-time Trump voters who didn’t want him to run again; another was made up of conservative evangelicals, who might presumably appreciate Pence’s roots in the religious right.
Look, one should never put too much trust in focus groups -- especially a handful of them at one snapshot in time -- but when they are chosen to test a candidate out with groups that should be favorable to the candidate, well, the results should be okay. These were not. And they confirm some priors for those who may be skeptical of a Pence run for the 2024 Republican nomination. It is revealing, then, even if not generalizable (pending future data). The association with Trump and the perceived failings of Pence to act in accordance with the former president's wishes on January 6 is to Pence what imminent death syndrome was to characters in that old Mr. Show bit. It puts him in an awkward position. And that is not the place to be with Republican primary voters at this time.
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Donald Trump will likely be an interesting test of a number of hypotheses as the invisible primary continues and ultimately yields to primary season next year. Among those hypotheses will be whether actions and not words carry the day for Republican primary voters. FHQ is quick to preach actions during the invisible primary, but when rubber meets road and voters are pulling (or not pulling) the lever for Trump in 2024, the actions of four years in the White House may mean less. In the context of abortion, more happened on the former president's watch than under any Republican administration, yet Trump's comments about how the issue hurt Republicans in the 2022 midterms, not to mention his general avoidance of the issue, weigh on the minds of evangelicals in and outside of Iowa. But that segment of those caucusing early next year in the first contest in Iowa will not be insignificant. Nor, however, are they monolithic.
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FHQ has not said much about announced Republican presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, and that probably says a lot. However, in the month since the entrepreneur formally declared, he has raised nearly $500,000 from 10,000 donors, many of them first-timers, across all 50 states. That is nothing to sneeze at, but by comparison, Trump hauled in ten times as much at the tail end of 2024, and DeSantis is sitting on a fortune left over from his gubernatorial reelection bid last year (in addition to what he continues to bring in). Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley has yet to report any figures. Longshot though he may be, Ramaswamy demonstrates how effective the online fundraising infrastructure combined with a steady stream media hits can be.
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On this date...
...in 1972, Edmund Muskie won the Democratic primary in Illinois, the Maine senator's final primary win of the cycle. Muskie also won the earlier New Hampshire primary.
...in 2019, SB 445 was signed into law, moving the Arkansas presidential primary back to March.
...in 2020, New York cancelled its Republican presidential primary after President Trump was the only candidate to qualify.
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