1 year ago
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The list of candidates in the 2024 Republican presidential primary is steadily growing, much to the delight of former President Trump and his team, carrying echoes of 2016 when Trump exploited the fractured field to win the party’s nomination.
Trump himself has welcomed each new candidate to the race, and his team believes a larger than expected field will weaken any effort to rally around a single alternative to the former president.
But there are reasons to be skeptical that 2024 is setting up as a repeat of 2016.
“I think a whole lot of people are wringing their hands to say ‘it’s 2016,’ when it’s fundamentally different,” said Doug Heye, a former Republican National Committee spokesperson.
Trump entered the 2016 race as a political outsider and relatively unknown quantity in a competitive primary filled with senators, governors and fixtures in GOP politics. The large field allowed Trump to win early states without winning a majority of voters. For example, he won the 2016 South Carolina primary with roughly 33 percent of the vote.
By the time the field condensed to just a few candidates, Trump’s path to the nomination was already fairly clear.
But Trump enters the 2024 primary as the clear frontrunner based on the vast majority of national polls, and some state polling. A Fox News poll conducted May 19-22 showed Trump with the support of 53 percent of primary voters, with Florida Gov. R...
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