I don’t often express approval of something from the New York Times plus their material is normally behind a paywall. Today we have an exception by Nate Cohn which has been reprinted at the DNyuz site and is freely available.
Cohn writes that because of the segmentation of the Republican electorate, Trump is particularly hard to beat in the GOP primary. He finds some 37% are Trump loyalists, another 17% lean toward Trump but are persuadable, 20% more are persuadable generally, and perhaps 25% won’t vote for Trump, even if nominated, meaning they would, in that case, not vote, cast a protest vote, or vote for Biden.
The problem is that while 63% are theoretically persuadable by a non-Trump candidate, so far nobody has been able to unify enough of that group to threaten Trump’s lead. He writes:
There’s the group of voters who may not love Mr. Trump, but who remain open to him in the primary and in some cases support him over the alternatives.
There’s also a second group of voters who probably won’t support Mr. Trump. They represent about one-quarter of the primary electorate and they say they’re not considering him in the primary.
These two groups of voters don’t just differ on Mr. Trump; they disagree on the issues as well.
Yet to beat Mr. Trump, a candidate must somehow hold nearly all of these voters together.
Easier said than done. A betting person would bet on Trump, at this point, but much can happen in the next several months.
