Donald Trump’s Republican primary problem just got even uglier for him

| 6:00 pm EDT May 15, 2024
Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.

Earlier this week the New York Times (which is tragically turning into the new National Enquirer) released a laugh out loud poll which claimed Donald Trump was set to win some swing states by double digits. Most polls don’t show results anything like this. But these day the media only gives any attention and credibility to the handful of polls that are the most obviously wrong.

The funny thing is that, even as these (let’s call them what they are) fake polls are getting so much attention, people are out there actually voting right now. Not in the general election, of course. But primary voting is still going on.

President Biden keeps getting ninety-something percent of the Democratic primary vote in state after state, a reminder that Democratic-leaning voters are strongly united behind him.

But Trump, even though he’s running unopposed at this point in the Republican primary, keeps failing to get more than about seventy to eighty percent of the vote. It happened again this week in Maryland and West Virginia, after happening in Indiana earlier this month. When you have no opponents and you’re still only getting three-quarters of the vote, that’s really, really bad.

The longer this problem goes on, the bigger of a problem it is for Trump. The more months go by since Nikki Haley and the other Republican candidates all dropped out, and the more the media talks about Trump being the de facto nominee, the more the Republican primary voting base should be falling in line behind Trump. But they’re not. Trump’s primary numbers are just as anemic as ever.

If one-fourth of the registered Republicans voting in the Republican primary race are turning out just so they can cast a protest vote against Donald Trump, what’s that supposed to look like in the general election? Trump isn’t even viable within his own party. And that’s before he becomes a convicted felon later this month, and before more of the general public sees his worsening senility on display in debates and such.

The notion that Trump is somehow ahead of Biden, just because one poll from a no longer trustworthy news outlet claims as much, is absurd when the public is out there actually voting and showing that Biden is far better off than Trump. We don’t have any way to know for sure what this race will look like, and we have to keep putting in the work as if it were a tie race. But the notion that Trump is ahead is just laugh out loud silly.

Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.