We’re seeing the usual horserace bullshit coverage of Trump’s vIcToRy in South Carolina: He won by double digits! And, we’re seeing some push back from the more liberal and thoughtful press: 40% of SC Republicans voted against Trump! Then, the the usual scrum of 30% of SC Republican voters say they won’t vote for a convicted Trump.
Seriously? Let’s all take a deep breath, and take a look at some real numbers (hold on, it’s going to require some math):
- POPULATION: According to the US Census, South Carolina has a population of approximately 5.3 million people.
- 18+ POPULATION: Now, I did have to do some rough calculations that involved taking off my shoes and socks, but if 21% of the SC population is under 18 years of age, that means that there are about 4 million who are over. And, you know what I call someone who’s 18 years old or older? An eligible voter.
- REGISTERED VOTERS: Now, we all know from reading our polling reporting that there’s a big difference between eligible voters, registered voters, and likely voters. In the 2020 general election, 3.5 million South Carolinians were registered to vote, 72% actually voted for those who are curious.
So, what does all of this mean? Let’s look at the actual numbers from the primary election:
- TRUMP got 450,000 votes — OMG! That’s almost 60% of the vote! but it’s about 12% of the registered voters.
- HALEY got just under 300,000 votes — OMG! 40% of the vote went against Trump! but it’s about 8% of registered voters.
So consider this: who actually voted in this primary? What was their motivation? I see it as one of three:
- FEALTY TO TRUMP: The MAGA super faithful turned out to vote for the blundering blustering orange felonious I2I4 corruption bot.
- I REALLY LOVE HALEY: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Phew! Sometimes I just crack myself up.
- I REALLY HATE TRUMP: The wistful never Trumpers and Dems trying to pwn the Republicans and other registered miscreants.
Can we really generalize anything from such a motivated self-selected sample? Seriously? We can’t. There’s nothing to interpret. There’s no real meaning behind these numbers because it was a foregone conclusion that Trump would win this election back in 2020 when he got 72% of the vote.
Some conventional wisdom does apply, though. Essentially, Trump is an incumbent. When the incumbent faces a serious primary challenger, they often lose the general election. The only thing that you can remotely conclude from the GOP primary is that Trump no longer has a death grip on the GOP electorate. He still has on the politicians who have whiffed at every opportunity they’ve had to rid themselves of him, but the electorate is not necessarily in his pocket.
Comment on that, why dontcha?
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The Psy of Life 
I like (and agree with) what Tengrain says: Trump’s floor is his ceiling, as to his voters.
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Howdy Ali!
Trump has divided the country and our positions are reified with regard to him. Now, he’s polarizing the Republicans. He’s diminishing his support, not increasing it. That’s the only meaningful thing to come out of SC and Michigan. There is a minority of Republican and independent voters who are motivated enough to vote against him in a meaningless primary.
It gives me hope for 2024.
Huzzah!
Jack
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It’s the usual BS by the MSM.
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Howdy Silver!
The MSM is such a disappointment, especially professionally. I saw it when I worked at a for-profit hospital as a social worker and international school as a teacher, too. As soon as profit becomes involved, professional ethics becomes secondary. Very disappointing since they are the fourth estate.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Well, 60-40 is a very good win by an incumbent (or, “incumbent” ) against a general election opponent from the other party. It isn’t very impressive by a presumed nominee against a challenger who is generally agreed by all not to have a chance. So, let’s imagine that all those 40% really don’t cave by November and vote for Trump after telling pollsters and reporters that they won’t. Some will stay home and not vote. That will hurt their party in the down ballot. Some will either write-in something, or leave the top office blank, but still vote the down ballot. But, given the current state of the GOP, the down ballot will be mostly MAGA candidates, either sincerely so, or pretending. How will the distaste for or fear of Trump by the 40% translate to their down ballot choices if they do vote? We don’t know. Probably a mixed bag.
And what if Haley continues on through the rest of the primaries with results, as in both SC and NH, in that same 60-40 range? She perhaps can, partly because the longer she goes on, the more disgusting and unhinged Trump will get about her, even threatening. And then there are the folks who say they will vote for Trump unless he is convicted of a felony. I don’t recall a polling number on them, but something in the 10-20% range comes to mind.
Does a candidate in so polarized an election have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning if they lose close to half of their own party’s voters?
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Bob, all the time Haley hangs in there the voters have a choice, what that will be who knows. But a one horse race severs no purpose and leaves us with two old men to fight it out.
Be it Trump or Biden, I see America going into decline and only a miracle can save the day.
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Howdy Bob!
You’re describing the Trump effect on the GOP ballot. It is why Georgia has two Democratic senators and there are a handful of divided state governments today. The thing is, he’s no longer dividing the nation. As a nation, we’ve decided on him, 60% against. Now, he’s dividing the Republican Party, 40% of that against him.
The problem with trying to take the Republican primary as any kind of barometer of Trump’s popularity is that the sample is so small. In 2020, 72% of the electorate turned out for the presidential election. In 2024 primary, 15% turned out. It’s not a very representative sample. It is self-selected, especially since the election is meaningless. You can’t really conclude anything from it other than Trump doesn’t have the widespread support he and the MSM claim he has.
Huzzah!
Jack
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It does seem he’s maxed out his base and attracted political opportunists, but his control of the party is largely created by MAGA Land being louder and crazier than everybody else, and intimidation.
Turnout in our elections has long been pathetic, especially in the mid-terms.
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Howdy Bob!
But not since Trump has been on the scene. He’s gotten our turn out to be pretty respectable, even in the mid-terms. Of course, 22 was helped by Dobbs, but still. Dobbs, Trump, climate change, and an issue to be named later will probably make this one of the biggest elections yet.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Then, the scary part may be what it takes to get voters interested. I’m reminded of a story about a farmer, his mule, and a traveler. The farmer bragged to the traveler that his mule was so smart that he controlled him with only voice commands. Then, when he told the mule to get moving to pull the wagon, the animal didn’t move. After shouting at the mule several times, the farmer got down off the wagon and pulled a 2X4 out from under the seat and whacked the mule up side of the head with it, got back on the wagon, told the mule to go, and it did. The traveler reminded the farmer what he said about how obedient the mule was. The farmer replied, “He is, but sometimes I have to get his attention.”.
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Howdy Bob!
Trump appeared at CPAC and basically said that democracy was over and then projected his fascism all over Biden, and no one seemed to care. Many people have tuned Trump out. Our minds and positions are made up regarding Trump. It doesn’t matter what he does.
Getting people to tune into the threat that the rest of the GOP poses to our democracy is going to be the hard part. We were motivated to vote Trump out of office in 2020. We were motivated to defy Trump in 2018. We were motivated to defend Roe in 2022. What motivates us in 2024? Sure, Dobbs and Trump are still issues, but they are so last election that they may not have the traction that they once did. On the other hand, folks still turn out to vote for abortion rights, so we’ve got that going for us.
Huzzah!
Jack
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The abortion issue isn’t going to go away as a voting driver, and the addition of the IVF ruling in Alabama adds to that. Getting people to take the greater threat seriously is harder. They find it hard to imagine and believe that so much of what we’ve always known as normal and permanent could be changed. In that way, fascism is like climate change, a change too vast to contemplate.
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Howdy Bob!
The Republicans keep shooting themselves in the foot with abortion. They’re doing their best to keep an unpopular policy position front-and-center of the election. With the million acre fire in Texas and Oklahoma, summer-like temperatures in other parts of the country, and hurricane season yet to come, we’ll see if mother nature can improve our imaginings of climate disaster. Fascism, maybe not, but we’ve got a reckoning coming with climate change.
Huzzah!
Jack
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That we do, and the hotter it gets, the faster it goes.
The Alabama frozen embryo ruling really stirred their pot, trying to have the “life at conception” thing both ways. And Biden is coming on strong throwing the border issue back in their laps.
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I saw a Gallup poll the other day showing immigration as the number one issue. It is just one poll, but it shows its dominance in the narrative right now. I think Nixon’s Silent Majority, i.e. suburban white women, will not be swayed off of the abortion issue. Talk about waking the sleeping giant.
Jack
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There’s a strong feedback loop between those polls about “number one issues” and what the “news” is talking most about on that day, an especially day after day, after day. The GOP are definitely doing everything they can to keep the abortion issue top of mind. That is going to hurt them.
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Howdy Bob!
Apparently, there was a NYT poll released the other day showing Biden behind Trump that everyone is freaking out about. Sometimes I’m glad to be living abroad and out of the US media bubble.
Given the way all of the elections since 2020 have gone, I don’t see any reason to really expect the 2024 election to go any differently.
Huzzah!
Jack
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And, the MSM simply don’t seem to be interested in the fact that Trump keeps winning primaries with only 60-70%.
Biden’s disapproval scores in polls really do reflect that most Americans insist on blaming Presidents for a lot of things over which they have little or no control, like inflation and other people’s wars, and things they can only do with the cooperation of Congress.
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And, he underperforms the polls in most of the states he wins. The difference between his voting percentages and polling percent when added up state-by-state is a net loss. He isn’t getting the percentage of vote that he gets in the polls. That maybe due to it being a primary and people are less motivated to vote. But, in Michigan and other states where there was a concerted effort to get a protest vote out against Biden by voting for none of the above, the number of people voting increased substantially and Biden’s support increased. In other words, love of Trump isn’t driving people to the polls to demonstrate their support. It is driving an anti-Trump vote to the polls, though.
Jack
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Yes, and this piece goes into that in some depth as regards polls even from 538: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/6/2227952/-The-538-GOP-Super-Tuesday-poll-averages-Way-way-off-and-systematically-overestimating-Trump-data?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
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Howdy Bob!
There is a huge disconnect between the results of all of the elections touched by the abortion issue since Dobbs and the polling and primary voting now. As we’ve both discussed, I think the polls reflect more of the disgruntled nature of our times than they do real support for Trump. In the end, I think we vote to preserve our democracy and the international order that we’ve built since WWII.
It doesn’t mean that we don’t all have work to do to ensure that Biden wins and gets the Congress he needs — he didn’t say that often enough in his SOTU — to get things done.
Huzzah!
Jack
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There are also some uncounted number of people who, like me, don’t answer the pollsters’ robo-calls.
Congress is critical, both houses. So, lots of work to do to end the obstruction.
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Howdy Bob!
For a long time I followed Five Thirty Eight for polling information, but their political analysis was a bit naive, I thought. Towards the end of Nate Silver’s time there and now that it is wholly a part of ABC, I don’t visit much any more. However, they did discuss the changes in polling and how pollsters try to account for unreachable people and still get a representative sample. I don’t know that they’ve got all the bugs worked out of it, though.
Hopefully, most Americans can see the obstruction that is plainly happening before them.
I have to say that after Biden’s fiery SOTU, I’m a bit more optimistic.
Huzzah!
Jon
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It certainly has to be difficult to frame Joe’s speech last night as the performance of a demented and spent old man stumbling through his last few years in the world. No doubt, the MAGA media will try.
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I think the complaint now is that he was talking too fast and that he was angry. Of course, for men, being angry enhances status, so it isn’t much of a complaint. What we’ve learned from the endless smear campaigns of the right is that any illusory explanation of an even that doesn’t comport with their interpretation of the mind is sufficient to turn off rational thought and just accept the illusion as reality.
Jack
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He failed to meet their framing. They hate having the script flipped on them. I expect they will try framing his empathy for the Palestinians as antisemitic (Bebe’s people already are.) They may also try saying he was hyped up on drugs to cover up his dementia. Not that that actually works pharmacologically)
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Howdy Bob!
I’m glad to see Biden following up on the speech with an ad that addresses all of the key issues he addressed in the speech, primarily his age. I don’t think it is smart to bet against Biden’s political instincts in this campaign. He’s kept his powder dry waiting for the appropriate moment to begin “campaigning.” In part, it is his age and experience that are guiding him through a complex maze that younger less talented politicians failed miserably at, like Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley and Chris Christie.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I’m reminded of a line in a song I heard long, long ago:
“Don’t marry none but a Texas girl, ’cause no matter what happens, she’s seen worse.”
And, the maze is very complex. The Israel-Gaza horror is one of the worst parts. He’s got Democrats and Independents on one side thinking he can make it stop with a phone call, or just by stopping aid to Israel (which is legally tricky when it involved already appropriated funds), and on the other side the Republicans in the House hoping he will do something, anything, they can hang an impeachment on, like abandoning an ally in time of war and which they could attack as antisemitic and so on.
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Biden seems well aware of the knife’s edge he is balancing on, thus the “hot mic” moment. I don’t think it was an accident, or if it was, it was something they are happy about. It sent the message they wanted it to send.
Conditions in Texas are almost as bad as those in Florida. I can’t believe people not only put with treatment like that from their state governments but want it.
Jack
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He is very aware of that, and of the use of small steps. A good example is his incremental moves to raise the pressure on Netanyahu, an infamously stubborn individual, without setting off a viscous response from the pro-Israel lobby here. Joe knows the art of frog boiling.
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There were certainly some boiled frogs in House Chamber during SOTU. LOL.
Jack
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Yep
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