Trump must emerge as the Peace candidate to stick out in the pool of neocons committed to even greater funding and danger in Ukraine.
2024 Polls: Is Trump the Peace Candidate?
By Roger Stone
Americans are poll-crazy. Polls of voters are regularly featured in political campaign and analysis coverage — but not all consumers realize that all polls are not alike. A poll is essentially a temporary snapshot in time of public opinion. Poll results can be (in some cases purposely) affected by a number of factors.
The size and properly weighted makeup of the polling sample to ensure that it reflects the universe of those who will actually be voting in the contest the poll seeks to test is often the most important factor. Does the poll, for example, tightly screen to locate only those voters who are likely to vote in the Republican presidential nominating contest, for example. In some cases, Independents or registered Republicans with no intention or history of voting in Republican primaries are included in a poll’s sample to achieve a certain outcome.
The order of the questions asked is also another crucial issue in assessing the accuracy of any given poll. A professional pollster must avoid order bias in which it inadvertently (or advertently) introduces certain information to the voter being poll-tested that would affect the voter’s ballot position.
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Then there is the wording of the poll questions, which, if done properly, is done in a completely disproportionate and unbiased manner. Many pollsters will actually rotate the names being tested in the survey of each voter to ensure that there is no advantage to one candidate whose name is always listed first in the poll questionnaire.
This explains how two polls taken at the same time frame in the nation’s first primary state of New Hampshire can have starkly different results. The University of New Hampshire’s Granite State Poll showed DeSantis leading Trump, 42%-30%, in a multi-candidate ballot test. But -a Coefficient survey conducted for the New Hampshire Journal found Trump up 11 points over DeSantis (37%-26%) in a multi-candidate race.
Many media polls are downright dishonest. For example, an informal Reuters survey of 10 onetime strong Trump supporters in New Hampshire found only three of them backing Trump again in 2024. Really? A sample of 10 whole voters? How incredibly unscientific and journalistically bogus.
There is often a huge disconnect between what the legacy or mainstream tells us is happening in the country and among the voters and what is really happening in the country.
For months, Donald Trump’s critics have insisted that he has worn out his welcome with the voters, and that Republicans particularly are ready to move on to another less polarizing standard bearer – very specifically Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Trump, they tell us, is damaged goods. Trump’s campaign they tell us is dead in the water. Republicans, they tell us are looking for a winner. The polls reflect none of this.
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A new Harvard-Harris poll conducted by respected pollsters Mark Penn shows that not only would Trump defeat either President Joe Biden seeking reelection, but would also handily defeat Vice President Kamala Harris were she to be the Democratic nominee.
Perhaps more importantly, the sample of 2,050 voters also showed that Trump would defeat either Biden or Harris by a wider margin than the Florida Governor.
Trump leads Biden by a margin of 46% to 41% while he would beat Harris by a margin of 48% to 40% while DeSantis would also beat both Democrats, he does so by a much thinner margin leading Biden. 42% to 39% and leading Harris 43% to 40%.
An Emerson College poll last week gave Trump a narrow 44% to 41% lead over Biden in a hypothetical 2024 election, while a Biden-DeSantis race would be a toss-up: 40% for the incumbent president, 39% for the Republican rival. So, the Emerson College poll tends to reinforce the results of the Harvard-Harris poll. Publications like Real Clear Politics often take all current polls within a given time period and publish the averages, an interpretative tool which is both legitimate and valuable.
At the same time as the Harvard-Harris poll, A Morning Consult poll showed that Trump held a 17% advantage over DeSantis among Republican primary voters in selecting a presidential nominee. Again, when multiple polls show a similar result when sharing solid methodology the results are more reliable, at least temporarily.
Interestingly, these poll numbers come at a time that Trump has taken significant criticism from the fake news media over his handling of classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago, and at the same time that a politically motivated prosecution of his real estate company was generating negative headlines in New York State. DeSantis, by contrast, has benefited from a $50 million paid media campaign, including digital advertising in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina ostensibly for fundraising, but in reality to begin building a political base nationally.
If anything, these polls demonstrate both the intensity of Trump’s current support, and the durability of his 2024 candidacy. I also outlined some of the pitfalls for Governor DeSantis last week:
The Not-So-Secret Plan Of Governor Ron DeSantis
Only because former President Donald Trump has elected to formally announce his candidacy for another term in the White House, has the 2024 presidential campaign officially begun. “The race can’t start until the frontrunner starts it,” John P. Sears, the canny political strategist for both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan that I worked for in the 1976 and 1980 Reagan campaigns, once taught me. Donald Trump, with a very intense hold on at least 45 to 48% of the national Republican primary vote, is most definitely the frontrunner.
Some Trump critics working for his defeat say that this is the limit of Trump’s potential support — indicating that he would be vulnerable in a two-party race. These RINO-operators miss three points:
First, there is the real intensity of Trump’s voters — they are rock solid and never likely to be wooed away by a challenger.
Secondly, it is highly unlikely that the 2024 contest will be a two-person race (although there is no doubt whatsoever that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who President Trump most definitely single-handedly elevated to the governorship, is certain to run). The field will likely include former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and potentially Georgia Governor Brian Kemp.
Florida Senator Rick Scott, no fan of DeSantis and close to Trump, has seemingly decided to forgo a 2024 candidacy. But neither his resources nor his determination should be ignored post-2024, depending on the results of the next presidential election. Florida’s other Senator, Marco Rubio, also no fan of DeSantis, appears unlikely to launch another bid and is grateful to President Trump for coming to a Miami rally the weekend before the 2022 election- helping Rubio achieve a solid win in which the senior Senator was heavily outspent by his Democrat opponent, Congresswoman Val Demmings. Rubio’s debate performance was so good in the two-candidates one and only clash that I have reposted the video here:
The third key factor Trump’s critics miss is that there is still a group of voters who are not for him today but who have strongly supported him in the past and whose votes he can clearly still win. While this pool is relatively small, it’s large enough to put him over 50% of the vote if he can conduct an “outsider” campaign in which he stresses his extraordinary economic achievements. He must also emerge as the Peace candidate in what is really a pool of neocons committed to even greater funding and danger in Ukraine.
Americans are growingly aware that America is careening toward World War III in Ukraine and that a bipartisan coalition of neocons in both Houses of Congress have shipped more than $100 billion as well as patriot missiles- a big money maker for Raytheon, and M1A1 Abrams tanks. While most Republicans are anti-Russian and support the media-created image of Zelensky’s Ukraine, these same Republican voters have misgivings about multi-billion dollar foreign adventures while America has 370,000 homeless veterans, as well as a fentanyl crisis, record-high gas prices, growing food shortages, and inflation that is crippling the American family. Republican voters understand the correlation between inflation and massive unhinged federal spending.
Given Trump’s success in negotiating a peace deal in the Middle East that no one thought possible, his distribution of lethal aide to the Ukrainians to use against Russia, his collection of billions of painful tariffs from the Chinese, and his ability to convince North Korean madman Kim Jong-un to put his nuclear weapons development program on hold; all prove to voters that it is Trump who can negotiate a peace in Ukraine that protects the sovereignty of our ally while getting Putin to withdraw his aggression. Trump is credible as the Peace candidate. Indeed, when visiting South Carolina, Trump pledged that he would have a peace deal within 24 hours of becoming President.
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Trump actually ran as an anti-interventionist and 2016, tapping into the support of many who supported Ron and Rand Paul. Trump systematically withdrew American troops from the Middle East without the disastrous consequences of Biden’s bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan. Trump is the one man who could negotiate a quick and balanced peace deal in Ukraine. Trump’s record in foreign affairs and his legendary history as a dealmaker makes this more than plausible to American voters.
As a House member, DeSantis supported the Obama Administration coup against the democratically elected government of Ukraine. His chief strategist and communications director, Christina Pushaw, has close ties to Zelensky and the Ukrainian leadership. Moreover, DeSantis has no record of successful negotiation or leadership in international affairs. Additionally, virtually all of his key financial supporters are big backers of a continued conflict in Ukraine. The enthusiastic support of both Jeb Bush and John Bolton tell you precisely where DeSantis is coming from. If Trump is the candidate of Peace, DeSantis is the candidate of continued war.
My colleague Laura Loomer exposed DeSantis for his longtime love affair with neocon warmonger John Bolton:
If There’s One Thing John Bolton Loves More Than War, It’s Ron DeSantis…
When asked which former President inspired him, DeSantis chose George H.W. Bush, the ultimate neocon, over Ronald Reagan.
This entire sequence of events reminds me of a period in 1968 when former Vice President Richard Nixon was launching what would ultimately be the greatest comeback in American politics.
Nixon’s chief rival, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller argued that Nixon, with the loss of the 1960 presidential race and a 1962 race for Governor of California under his belt, could not win the upcoming 1968 election.
In fact, Rockefeller launched a national advertising campaign of full page newspaper ads, making the case that he had never lost an election and that nominating Nixon again would doom the GOP to another loss of the White House. Like DeSantis, Rockefeller’s entire claim to the nomination was based on the perception that he was a stronger general election candidate than his rival.
Rockefeller’s campaign would come crashing down when the respected Gallup poll was published just ahead of the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach. The poll showed that while both Nixon and Rockefeller would both defeat Vice President Hubert Humphrey, as well as his primary challenger Senator Eugene McCarthy, Nixon actually posted numbers in which he defeated both Democrats by a larger margin than the New York Governor.
Demonstrating yet again the volatility and temporary nature of all polling, Nixon would end up besting his Democrat opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, by a single point to become President.
At the moment, at least, reputable polls with solid methodology show Donald Trump well positioned to stave-off a rush by the little man he made Governor of Florida.
From rogerstone.substack.com