Presidential Primaries Don't Usually Go As We Expect Them To
Frontrunners often lose. Trump isn't inevitable.
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Last November, The New York Times published this article by opinion columnist Bret Stephens:
The piece argues that Trump was “finished as a serious contender for high office” because Republicans were tired of him dragging them down in elections. That analysis might seem obviously wrong now, with Trump leading the GOP presidential primary in poll after poll. But at the time, Stephens was in good company. Pundits everywhere in late 2022 were confidently declaring the Trump era over.
Half a year later, opinions have flipped. Now, analysts will tell you with the same level of conviction that Trump has the nomination in the bag, pointing to his strong poll numbers as evidence.
But it’s a stark reversal to go from “Trump is doomed” to “Trump is inevitable” in just six months. If the conventional wisdom was wrong then, there’s a good chance it’s wrong again now. And because Republicans won’t cast their primary votes for at least another seven months, there’s still more than enough time for Trump to stumble and blow his lead.
If that happens, it wouldn’t be unusual. In nearly every presidential primary without an incumbent going back to 2008 (the earliest cycle for which comprehensive polling averages are available), candidates who were considered the frontrunner at this point or even later in the primary season failed to win the nomination.
In the 2020 Democratic Primary, Bernie Sanders was considered the frontrunner for almost the entire month of February—from his strong showing in the Iowa caucuses to Biden’s victory in South Carolina. Things only turned decisively in Joe Biden’s favor after Super Tuesday.
In the 2016 Republican Primary, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio were leading the polls until July 2015. Even as late as November, Ben Carson had a moment where he was polling ahead of Trump.
In the 2012 Republican Primary, several candidates, including Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Rick Perry, outpolled Mitt Romney at various points between August 2011 and February 2012. Romney only nailed down Republican support in March and April, well after states began holding primaries.
In the 2008 Democratic Primary, Hillary Clinton was considered the overwhelming favorite well into January of election year. Only after the Iowa caucuses did the insurgent candidate Barack Obama overtake her.
In the 2008 Republican Primary, Rudy Giuliani led the polls throughout all of 2007, followed not by John McCain but by Fred Thompson. McCain only began to lead the polls in mid-January.
The only example in which one single candidate remained the clear frontrunner throughout the entire primary season was the 2016 Democratic primary. But even that year wasn’t necessarily smooth for the eventual nominee, Hillary Clinton. While she never officially fell behind Sanders in the polling averages, he did gain enough support to pose a serious challenge.
The specifics of each of these instances and how well they mirror the 2024 GOP primary are less important than the broad takeaway: primary competitions are volatile and unpredictable. More often than not, they turn out differently than pundits expect. Typically, being the frontrunner doesn’t confer inevitability status until January or February of election year at the very earliest.
Unfortunately, the journalists stubbornly refuse to learn this lesson. Rather than recognize that primary predictions are inherently uncertain, pundits fall into the same trap each election cycle, believing that this time things will be different. This time there aren’t going to be any big surprises or upsets. This time they can forecast the future with precision. But as we’ve already seen this cycle, with the flip from “Trump is finished” to “Trump is inevitable” in the span of six months, our ability to predict the future hasn’t improved as much as pundits might think.
Why do journalists continue to make these kinds of erroneous predictions? For one thing, they are overconfident in the accuracy and staying power of polling data. For another, they have an overinflated sense of their ability to analyze the electorate. Perhaps most important, though, is the need for a clear story arc and dramatic headlines. Few people will read an article with the title “Polls Shift Slightly, Putting Trump In Marginally Stronger Position,” so journalists and headline writers crank things up to read more like “Donald Trump Annihilates Ron DeSantis in Biggest Poll Lead Yet.”
That headline is a particularly audacious form of clickbait, but it captures the more generic journalistic tendency to avoid ambiguity when it comes to analyzing primary campaigns. The problem with this is not only that it makes the analysts themselves look foolish in retrospect when things turn out differently from how they forecast, but that it gives the public a false impression of the campaign in the moment. And while journalists frequently overinflate their own importance, there’s no denying that media coverage does influence political outcomes. Publishing simplistic coverage about the primary campaign could have real-life consequences on election results.
Given the weight of their responsibility, the media should stop treating the 2024 primary campaign as a way to drive traffic with sensational headlines. It may be naive to expect such restraint from the news ecosystem as a whole, but it’s not outlandish to suggest that individual journalists could turn up the nuance and turn down the sensationalism.
And so as the campaign shifts into full gear, I hope that the more thoughtful pundits can embrace uncertainty and stop pretending that they know how things will turn out. Because while Trump has the advantage now, presidential primaries don’t usually go as we expect them to.
A version of this article was originally published in Discourse Magazine.
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It's definitely problematic when pundits make the types of sweeping claims you mentioned, given how uncertain/dynamic primaries can be. But from late 2015 until he won the nomination in 2016, Trump led the rest of the GOP field pretty consistently. So, there's a recent precedent for that, and given what we know about the nature of Trump's appeal, maybe the same pattern holds this time around?
I can go either way, but clicked "no" as I get other news already and your writing is uniquely you. I see tho' that over the majority say "yes" and I am fine with this, Dorsey