Tracking the invisible primary: Three lanes to victory in the … – Brookings Institution

Editor's note:

In this series, we track key election metrics for presidential candidates throughout the campaign period known as the invisible primary.

The list of presidential candidates included is based on the candidates listed in AP News, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Politicos descriptions of the 2024 field.

Throughout his political career, Donald Trump has weathered scandals that would have cratered other presidential candidates. He has displayed remarkable Teflon in the face of personal scandals, business misconduct, and now his fourth criminal indictment, which, if convicted of racketeering charges, would send him to jail for at least five years.

Throughout this marathon of legal turmoil, Trump remains the undisputed leader of his party. In many polls, both at the state and national levels, he leads his opponents by 40 points or more, making him the undisputed frontrunner for the GOP nomination. Even in the face of news that would have buried any other politician, his base within the Republican Party remains strong and few of his challengers are taking him on directly. A recent New York Times/Siena poll helps explain the GOP dilemma. That survey reveals that likely primary voters are divided into three categories: those who strongly support Trump and view him very favorably, about 37% of the Republican electorate; those who are persuadable to Trump (37%); and those firmly opposed to him (25%).

Based on this segmentation of GOP voters, candidates are jockeying around the possible routes to victory within this political configuration. Given the politics, the first strategic option is to out-Trump the former president himself. This means playing to his populist base, focusing on cultural issues, and attacking Democrats for unfairly targeting Trump. The second option, typified by Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, is to stand in clear opposition to Trump. And the third lane is a murky one where candidates oppose Trump on some things but support him on others.

To examine the various candidate strategies, we studied the extent to which each Republican candidate is courting Trumps base. We researched each candidates proximity to Trumps rhetoric and policy positions and visualized the 2024 Republican field as a kind of solar system in which Trumps policy positions and rhetoric form the sun, with the other candidates orbiting at varying distances based on how closely aligned they are with Trumps platform. With Trumps voter base acting as a Republican candidates potential golden ticket to the nomination, the essence of a candidates campaign strategy lies in their decision to resist or embrace Trumps gravitational pull or to try and straddle the murky middle.

Several ideological and political features define Trumps base, differentiating it from the rest of the Republican primary electorate. The first is a persistent belief in Trumps innocence: 75% of Trump supporters believe he did nothing wrong in his handling of classified documents and 92% believe his actions following the 2020 election were within his rights. Second, the Trump base embraces America First policy positions, with 63% opposing further aid to Ukraine, 76% supporting less U.S. involvement in world affairs, and 67% opposing a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Third, the former presidents voters are drawn to existential and dystopian rhetoric about the state of the country. Trumps base is more likely than non-Trump Republicans to anticipate a civil war in the next few years (30% to nine percent) and to believe the nation is on the brink of collapse (75% to 54%). Lastly, they embrace a populist view of American politics, with 84% saying elected officials should prioritize the common sense of ordinary people over the knowledge of experts (compared to 61% of non-Trump supporters, on average) and 26% (versus 6% of non-Trump Republicans) predicting a coming storm that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders.

To define the sun of Trumpism, we analyzed Trumps campaign website and speech at this years Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). We distilled our findings into four categories to serve as our guide for evaluating each candidates proximity to Trump.

Personalistic support for Trump: How the candidate talks about Trump and the Trump presidency, and their response to the classified documents indictment in June.

Support for key Trump policies: We identified three areas where Trumps positions represent either a departure from traditional conservative positions or exaggerated versions of such positions that would have been outside the mainstream in a pre-Trump Republican Party.1

Embracing Trump-style rhetoric and tone: The degree to which the candidate replicates the language Trump uses on the campaign trail.2

Construal of the 2020 election and January 6: How the candidate talks about the results of the 2020 election and the events of January 6.

We then studied each Republican presidential candidate to see how closely they align with Trumps policy positions and rhetoric based on their campaign websites, speeches, statements, social media posts, interviews, and media coverage. If a candidate did not have a publicly stated position, we gave them a Not Applicable (N/A). We limited our search to comments made by the candidate since Trumps emergence onto the political scene in 2016. If a candidate changed their position within this timeframe, we accounted for their most recent position.

We used this data to assign each candidate a score between zero and one for each category where zero indicates a rejection of Trumps position and one indicates a complete embrace. We summed the scores across categories to calculate each candidates score out of a possible 14. Using the total scores, we determined five numeric ranges associated with the following levels of proximity: high, medium-high, medium, medium-low, and low proximity. Based on their overall score, we placed each candidate in one of these numeric ranges, then assigned them to the proximity level corresponding to that numeric range.

Based on our data analysis, we placed each candidate in the solar system corresponding to their level of proximity to Trump. Candidates in the orbit closest to Trump are the most aligned with Trumps policy positions and rhetoric, while those in the orbit furthest away are the least aligned. Note the drop-down function where you can see quotes from each candidate that illustrate where they are in relation to Trump.

High proximity candidates

Personalistic support for Trump

Support for key Trump policies

Adopting Trumps rhetoric and tone