As yet another gag order is issued by a federal judge to former President Trump, Newsmax headlines: https://www.newsmax.com/
McLaughlin Poll: Trump Has All But Won GOP Primary, Very Strong Against Biden
The story by pollsters Jim and John McLaughlin – full disclosure Trump pollsters – reports:
“Since our last national poll, Donald Trump has gone to Iowa, New Hampshire and to court. The most attention Joe Biden received was when he flew back and forth to Israel, where he may be talking tough, while appeasing Hamas and Iran.
The result – President Trump destroys the Republican primary field and widens his lead over Joe Biden.
This national poll of 1,000 likely voters (+/-3.1% at the 95% confidence interval), was completed between October 19th and 25th.
In the Republican primary, among all candidates, Donald Trump has his largest lead of the year, +47%, receiving 55% of the vote to Ron DeSantis 8% (way down from 31% in January), Nikki Haley 8%, Vivek Ramaswamy 7%, Mike Pence 6%, Chris Christie 3%, Tim Scott 2%, Larry Elder, Doug Burgum, Asa Hutchinson, Perry Johnson, all received 1% with 10% undecided. After we began the poll, Larry Elder, Perry Johnson and Mike Pence have all ended their campaigns.
In a two-way ballot between President Trump and Ron DeSantis, Trump leads 73% to DeSantis 27%. No undecided.
Most distressing for Ron DeSantis is the serious rise of his negative ratings. In January, among all voters, DeSantis had a favorable to unfavorable rating of 40% favorable to 39% unfavorable. Now DeSantis’ favorable rating among all voters has declined to 34% while his unfavorable rating rose to 51%. This is a big net decrease, -18%.
….Among all voters President Trump leads Joe Biden 48% to 43% with 9% undecided. Most interesting President Trump receives 27% of the African American vote and 39% among Hispanics. Joe Biden is losing a good portion of his 2020 voting base.
A key reason for President Trump’s lead is that among all voters 70% say the country is on the wrong track. Only 24% say we’re headed in the right direction. Among the undecided voters, 76% say wrong track.”
Yes, for sure this poll is coming from Trump’s pollsters. But the McLaughlin’s are serious professionals. And rule one in these polls is not to feed the client a bunch of polling nonsense just to make the client feel better. They want the facts. Just the facts.
What the McLaughlins are reporting here are the facts – just the facts. The fact is that the former President is at this moment running away with the GOP nomination. Just this week candidate and former Vice President Mike Pence pulled out of the race for the obvious reason that he was getting exactly nowhere. One can suspect that as time moves on, Pence will not be alone in doing this. A few days earlier another candidate, Larry Elder, did the same.
The country’s calendar moves this week from October to November. And traditionally in American politics that signals the beginning of the two-month holiday season that is Thanksgiving and Christmas. Which in turn means Americans shift their attention from the next election to the pending arrival of turkey and Santa Claus.
And that in turn this time around means the politics of 2023 will be ending more or less where it began: with the former President running away with the polls.
Stay tuned, though. January – and the Iowa caucuses loom beyond Santa. And politics 2024 will be underway.