After Nikki Haley withdrew from the Republican presidential primary last week, it became crystal clear that the November contest will be a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. If either candidate wants to best his opponent, each will have to maintain and expand on the constituencies he captured in 2020. In other words, each is only able to lose among certain voters as much as the other guy loses among other voters. This is a problem for both candidates. It's particularly evident in Trump's case, though, because his primary challengers were more serious than Biden's. Despite winning primary after primary, the exit polls suggest that Trump faces a serious problem with some segments of the Republican and conservative electorate. For this month's focus group, we spoke with 10 men and women who voted for Trump twice before but won't be voting for him again. They are the kinds of voters Trump can ill afford to lose. Some said they'd had enough of Trump's personality. Others drew the line at Jan. 6 and his handling of classified documents. Most interestingly, more than one felt that Trump was no longer the "outsider" candidate, a title our participants were more prepared to hand to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who came in for a lot of praise over the course of the evening. But just because these voters were down on Trump didn't mean they were up on Biden. All our participants said the country was on the wrong track and most said they liked Biden less today than they did four years ago. There are 237 days until the 2024 presidential election. It's possible that between now and November the race becomes a contest in which at least one candidate is genuinely, widely popular. For now, as this discussion makes clear, it's a race to see who's least unpopular. Sad.
Here's what we're focusing on today:
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Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Opinion Today: Why they’re not voting for Trump again
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