Former President donald-trump” target=”_blank”>Donald Trump <presidential nomination.
The most recent public opinion numbers come from a Reuters/Ipsos national poll conducted in mid-December and released a couple of days ago. Fifty-four percent of Republicans questioned in the survey said they’d back the former president as their party’s standard-bearer in 2024.
2021: THE YEAR THE 2024 PRESIDENITAL RACE IGNITED
Two other potential contenders – Floridaron-desantis” target=”_blank”> Gov. Ron DeSantis<– were a distant second and third at 11% and 8% support.
Former President Donald Trump greets supporters during his Save America rally in Perry, Ga., on Saturday, Sept. 25, 2021. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)
(AP)
Trump spent 2021 repeatedly flirting with another White House run.
“I am certainly thinking about it,” he told Fox News in a November interview.
“I think a lot of people will be very happy, frankly, with the decision,” the former president added, suggesting that such a decision would be announced after the 2022 midterm elections.
The Reuters/Ipsos survey is in line with other public opinion surveys of the 2024 GOP nomination race. An average of all the most recent national polls puts Trump at 52% support, light years ahead of the rest of the other possible Republican White House hopefuls.
But of note: The support for the nomination Trump grabs in these public opinion surveys is a good 20-30 points lower than his overall standing among GOP voters. Trump’s favorable rating among Republicans in the Reuters/Ipsos poll stood at 82%.
WHAT TRUMP TOLD FOX NEWS ABOUT HIS 2024 TIMETABLE
Another early 2024 barometer is elections – where Trump was a juggernaut in 2021.
The former president’s three main political fundraising committees reported hauling in a combined $82 million during the first six months of the 2021, with over $100 million cash on hand as of the end of July, which was the most recent filing period for the groups. Fueling much of the fundraising are Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” and “stolen.”
One thing Trump’s fundraising, impressive poll position, immense clout over his party, and repeated flirtations has not done is discourage other potential GOP White House hopefuls from visiting the states that kick off the elections and caucus calendar.
GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida addresses the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership meeting, on Nov. 6, 2021 in Las Vegas, Nevada
(Fox News )
As Fox News recently reported, there were 15 trips last year to Iowa – the state that for half a century’s kicked off the nominating calendar – by nine potential Republican presidential contenders. That’s not far off from the 17 visits by 11 possible candidates in 2013 at the same early point in the wide-open GOP nomination race in the 2016 cycle.
And according to a Fox News count, there were also eight visits to us-regions in 2021 by six potential contenders, close to the 11 visits by seven possible candidates in 2013 to the state that for a century has held the first presidential primary in the nominating calendar.
“Everybody understands that the president is very seriously looking at 2024,” longtime Republican consultant John Brabender, a veteran of numerous GOP presidential campaigns, recently told Fox News. “I think the majority of candidates would be deferential to Trump if he decides to run in 2024, but what they don’t want to do is find themselves in a situation that if Trump decides he’s not running, then they’ve wasted a lot of time.”
U.S. Capitol attack anniversary
Thursday marks one year since the deadlycapitol-protests” target=”_blank”> storming of the U.S. Capitol<‘s Electoral College victory over Trump in the 2020 election.
Trump announced two weeks ago that he would hold a news conference at his south us-regions resort and residence on the one-year anniversary of the attack on the Capitol.
“I will be having a news conference on January 6th at Mar-a-Lago,” he said in a statement released by Save America, one of his political committees.
In announcing his news conference, Trump repeated his unfounded claims, once again describing his electoral defeat as “the rigged Presidential Election of 2020” and that “the insurrection took place on November 3rd.”
In the weeks after the 2020 election, dozens of legal challenges by the then-president and his allies were shot down in the half dozen states where Biden narrowly edged Trump to secure a convincing Electoral College victory. And then-Attorney General William Barr said the Justice Department had not seen fraud on the kind of scale that could flip the election.
Biden edged Trump by a razor-thin margin in Arizona, becoming the first Democrat in nearly a quarter-century to carry the state in a presidential election.
Last year a Trump fueled and GOP-driven partisan audit of votes was conducted in Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous county. Results of the review found that Trump received a couple of hundred fewer votes than the results from the certified election.
