The Very Stable Primary
1st August 2023
Since the early campaign got underway in earnest, the contest for the Republican nomination has been remarkably stable. Trump has held a commanding lead, Ron DeSantis has lagged behind him in a clear but distant second, failing to breakthrough as many thought he might after declaring his candidacy. Meanwhile, no one else has registered enough of a polling surge to announce themselves as a serious alternative.
Insofar as there has been any movement in the race so far, it has been in Trump’s favor. And his commanding lead is evident in a New York Times/Siena College poll published today. It finds 54 percent of Republican primary voters backing Trump, with DeSantis on 17 percent. No one else can register more than 3 percent.
In his analysis of the poll, Nate Cohn puts Trump’s commanding lead in clear terms: “In the half century of modern presidential primaries, no candidate who led his or her nearest rival by at least twenty points at this stage has ever lost a party nomination. Today, Donald J. Trump’s lead over Ron DeSantis is nearly twice as large.”