Trump. But why?

As you’ve probably heard, Donald Trump scored a clear win in yesterday’s New Hampshire Republican primary, with 54.3% of the vote. Nikki Haley on 43.3% did a bit better than the polls had suggested, but that wasn’t good enough: this was always going to be one of her best states, so to change the narrative she needed either to win or to come so close as to be able to present it as a virtual tie.

Haley has promised to stay in the contest, much to Trump’s exasperation. There’s no particular reason why she should pull out; it’s always possible that something will come up, and establishing herself as the one serious alternative to Trump might turn out to be useful. But unless there is a major intervening event, Trump is now set to be the nominee.

How did it come to this? A year ago, when memories of the poor Republican performance in the 2022 midterms were still fresh, things looked very different. It appeared then that the Republican establishment had learnt its lesson, and that it was determined to make an all-out effort to stop Trump, with Ron DeSantis as its standard-bearer.

DeSantis never captured the imagination of Republican voters. But after his failings had become clear, Republican leaders could have dumped him and switched to another candidate, presumably Haley. A few did, but most simply rolled over or hid their heads in the sand, indicating that they were powerless to stop Trump’s nomination.

Last week I blamed “a risk-averse party leadership,” and I still think that’s the main problem. (Others might call it cowardice.) There’s also a typical collective action problem; no-one wanted to move first without assurances that others would follow, but no-one wanted to give such assurances until they knew that a movement was on. But there’s also a genuine calculation of the party’s best interests, which I think is comprehensible even if one thinks it mistaken.

The pivotal time was last April, when Trump’s first indictment (on a New York hush money case) produced a sharp jump in his polling and fundraising. Other indictments followed, on more serious charges, without denting his popularity among Republican voters. Republican leaders seem to have drawn two conclusions: firstly, that denying Trump the nomination would be more difficult and divisive than they had supposed, and secondly, that allowing him to be the nominee would pose less of a downside risk because he was most unlikely to win the election.

Trump’s legal worries appear to have energised his own supporters, but there’s no evidence that they’ve won him many fans among the swinging voters that he would need to win the election. And since the trials will showcase many of his existing negatives – not least by encouraging him to focus on himself instead of on policy questions where the Democrats would be vulnerable – that problem is only going to get worse.

What the Republican establishment figures, of whom Senate leader Mitch McConnell could be taken as reasonably typical, would like most is a winning Republican candidate who is not Trump. But if it seems to them that Trump cannot be beaten without devastating the party, then that option is no longer available. So it makes some sense to go for the next best thing, namely a losing candidate who is Trump.

There’s a risk, of course, that he could win. It seems to me that risk is very small, and I suspect McConnell and the others agree. They don’t want a landslide defeat, since that might put their own seats in jeopardy (although McConnell himself is not up for re-election), but they want a defeat that’s big enough to knock some sense into a critical mass of Trump supporters. And they also, for obvious reasons, don’t want to be seen as responsible for it.

Finally, a word on the Democrat contest, such as it is. President Joe Biden did not officially contest the New Hampshire primary, due to a dispute about its timing (and also not wanting to acknowledge that he faces any real opposition). But he won it anyway. With about a third as many voting as in the Republican primary, about 65% of them voted for Biden as a write-in candidate; 19.5% opted for Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips and 4.6% for new age mystic Marianne Williamson.

Many Democrats would like a younger nominee, and for what it’s worth I’m inclined to agree with them. But it’s going to be Biden’s choice as to whether he steps down or not, and for the moment he seems set for a rematch against Trump.