Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Polls, voters and a polar vortex threaten to freeze Haley and DeSantis

[Brexiter]

Des Moines Register:

More Nikki Haley supporters would vote for Biden over Trump in November, Iowa Poll finds

Just 23% of Nikki Haley supporters say they would vote for Donald Trump in a rematch with Joe Biden, a new Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows right before the Iowa Caucuses

Just 23% of Haley supporters say they would vote for Trump in a matchup with Biden. The plurality of Haley supporters, 43%, would vote for Biden instead.

The poll notes that “more than a quarter of likely Republican caucusgoers would not vote for Trump in the general election if he were the Republican nominee”. That’s Iowa, not New Hampshire. It’s a surprisingly high number if you figured Trump to be a lock for ~80% of his party.

Still, the conventional wisdom is he’ll win easily despite the cold weather. We’ll see soon enough if that’s right.

Ben Jacobs/New York magazine:

Ron DeSantis Is Being Left Out in the Cold

Now the Florida governor is falling into third place in Iowa despite having exhaustively campaigned in the state, crisscrossing each of its 99 counties. Despite the fact that Trump lost in Iowa in 2016, the former president seems poised to win the state by an overwhelming margin this time. DeSantis had hoped to use the solidly social conservative state to land the first punch on the former president. Instead, he’s already on the ropes before the first votes of the 2024 presidential primary have even been cast.

On Saturday, the Florida Republican still seemed undeterred as he campaigned in the frigid snow and his support in polls continued to drop like the mercury. Napoleon didn’t give up after Russia, either. Like DeSantis, he still had to face his Waterloo.

Because you haven’t seen enough of this weather obsession by us traveling reporters. Freezing my caucus off pic.twitter.com/nCNT3W4Z5I

— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) January 14, 2024

Jonathan V Last/The Bulwark:

Welcome to the Loser's Ball

The incentives explain why Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley are trying to avoid catastrophic success.

Ron DeSantis’s campaign is over. It has been over since the first debate. Had he not gotten Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds to endorse him, DeSantis would have dropped out weeks ago.1

He is down to third place in the national polling average and is 50 points behind Trump.

In New Hampshire, it’s worse. DeSantis is polling in single digits (he’s at 6.5 percent; not a typo) and is in a statistical tie with Vivek for fourth place.2

If you’re Ron DeSantis, what are your incentives? They’re to get out of this clusterfork as quick as possible, taking the least amount of damage along the way.

There’s a problem: In Iowa, DeSantis is only 2 points behind Haley for second place.

DeSantis’s best-case scenario is that he finishes a close third in Iowa, pauses for a day, and then announces on Wednesday that he’s suspending his campaign. He scurries back to Tallahassee; watches the carnage unfold in New Hampshire; and hopes that seeing Haley get smoked dims the memory of his bumbling adventure.

The worst-case scenario for DeSantis is that he surprises in Iowa and finishes in a strong-ish second. Because that result would make it harder for him to pull the plug before New Hampshire. Donors and staff would claim momentum. The media would focus on him. It’s easy to stop a campaign on a low-note. It’s harder when you’ve just struck fool’s gold.

Super interesting poll as always from @CBSNewsPoll, with good news/bad news for Biden campaign watchers: Biden +27 v Trump among voters <30 (62%-35%) BUT Only 33% say they "definitely" will vote. Read it all ->https://t.co/FDRBp3CBWH

— John Della Volpe (@dellavolpe) January 14, 2024

CBS:

CBS News poll finds Trump's national lead grows as GOP nominating contests kick off

His legal issues obviously haven't hurt his standing with primary voters and some of his recent controversial statements resonate with many GOP and "MAGA" voters.

Republican voters continue to believe Trump is their best bet to beat Joe Biden in November, even as Nikki Haley leads Joe Biden by a wider margin in a general election match-up than either Trump or Ron DeSantis. We show why in this analysis.

CBS:

Here's why Haley has such a lead over Biden: She draws more moderates and independents and more voters with college degrees than Trump does against Biden.

She also peels off more 2020 Biden supporters than either Trump or DeSantis does, and erases Mr. Biden's edge with women.

Haley runs even with Mr. Biden on some key traits: she polls about even among those looking for a president who shows empathy and is open to compromise — qualities that large majorities of voters say is important to them.

By contrast Mr. Biden leads Trump and DeSantis among voters who want these qualities.

And Haley does just as well as Trump and DeSantis, if not a little better, among voters who say showing toughness is important.

But this all sets up what might figure to be a turnout election: Mr. Biden does better among those who say they'll probably vote than those who definitely will.

So the out party is more eager to vote than the in party, at least this early (as always). And see the Della Volpe tweet above.

The votes are there for Biden, but now it’s up to the campaign to get them activated.

Are we still writing articles about how Americans aren't feeling the improved economy without acknowledging that (a) most people say they themselves are doing OK or better and (b) the disparity is mainly driven by Republicans? pic.twitter.com/haPu3xuh8Z

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 14, 2024

EJ Dionne/Washington Post:

Might a silent GOP majority be ready to move beyond Trump?


Is the Republican Party irrevocably committed to Donald Trump? GOP voters will begin to answer this consequential question in Iowa on Monday and eight days later in New Hampshire. Believe it or not, there is a chance the verdict will be no.


This is not one of those defy-the-conventional-wisdom-for-the-heck-of-it takes. You can’t look at polls outside New Hampshire and pretend the Las Vegas odds-makers are wrong in viewing Trump as the overwhelming favorite to win the Republican nomination.


But there is a difference between likelihood and inevitability, just as there is a difference between the few Republicans who are firmly anti-Trump and a larger group willing to ponder escorting him off the national stage.

MORE ON THE BORDER — — SCALISE says senate bill is DOA in house JOHNSON says congress can’t solve border until Trump is elected or a republican is back in the White House.

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) January 15, 2024

Cam Joseph/Columbia Journalism Review:

Q&A: Tina Nguyen’s Unique Perspective on the American Right

To kick things off, I talked to Tina Nguyen. She’s a national correspondent for Puck and an alumna of Politico and Vanity Fair—and, before that, a slew of right-wing publications where she got her start in journalism. (She’s also my friend.) Her new book, The MAGA Diaries, chronicles her coming of age within the right-wing movement and the conservative media-industrial complex. Her time inside the movement gives her a unique perspective on the forces behind MAGA—and intimate knowledge of many of the people now running the show. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

At one point in the book, you describe your life as “a very weird gray zone,” as a reporter who covers the movement you came up in. Can you unpack why that’s such a weird place to be?

It all boils down to loyalty, I think—and gratitude. There’s no way I’d be in the place I am right now if not for being part of the libertarian/conservative journalistic community, which gave me this insight into other aspects of conservatism that a lot of mainstream reporters just don’t have.

Internally, I keep having this sense of “Oh my God, I’m betraying my college friend group and the people who mentored me and the people who did me all of these big solids in the past.” If it weren’t for these networks, I wouldn’t have gotten the job at the Daily Caller. Even [though] I got fired from the Daily Caller, if it hadn’t been for Tucker being, like, a really nice person who gave me a recommendation for my next job, I wouldn’t have ended up in New York, writing for Vanity Fair.

I don’t think anyone who came up outside of that movement quite understands that internal tension. And honestly, if I’m feeling like this as someone who’s simply writing about the movement, I cannot imagine what it is like to be someone inside that movement who is unhappy with the way things are going but either can’t get out or feels like if they leave, they’re junking twenty, thirty years of their entire lives.

We knew this day would come. It’s straight out of the Trump playbook. It’s the only thing they know. All Cassidy Hutchinson did was tell the truth. The truth scares people like Rep. Barry Loudermilk. They don’t know how to deal with it. They don’t recognize integrity & courage… https://t.co/rHksMDaDwV

— Olivia of Troye (@OliviaTroye) January 13, 2024

Jon King/Michigan advance:

Troubled state GOP operations extend far beyond Michigan

Lackluster fundraising follows leadership fights and refusal to move on from 2020

As the battle over who is the actual leader of the MIGOP continues to play out in dueling press releases and alternate websites from Chair Kristina Karamo and Co-Chair Malinda Pego, the core function of the party — raising money to get Republicans elected to office and keeping them there — has been derailed by a fundraising drought and leadership selection process that seemingly caters to an ever more extreme faction within the party.

“[Former President Donald] Trump’s endorsed candidates always win primaries, but the election deniers, they’re making the Democrats’ job easy,” Miles Coleman of the University of Virginia Center for Politics told the Michigan Advance.

Coleman adds that it’s not a surprise that finances have become an issue in those party operations that have lost focus on successfully electing candidates to office.

“If you are the Arizona Republican Party, instead of spending money on voter outreach or ads or field operations, you’re spending potentially millions of dollars on recounts,” he said.​

Biden hauls in c.$100 Million —more than any Democrat ever at this point Not sure if this will quiet some of the Dem insider handwringing about Biden via @merica https://t.co/bNCuvTV5YW

— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) January 15, 2024

Matt McNeil and Cliff Schecter:

YouTube Video