Ever since Donald Trump careened into the lead in national and state polls, most have assumed that his bizarre, off-the-wall statements got him there. This has led to a lot of soul-searching inside the Republican Party – along with disbelief outside. Recent history, however, tells us that the opposite is more likely true.
Those of us who remember Republican nomination contests before 2004 have actually seen never-held-office candidates before – and they’ve done much better than the low-20s.
1998: Reverend Pat Robertson wins 26-7% in the Iowa caucuses, putting him in second place (ahead of the future nominee, Bush the Elder), before winning two other states (neither of which were in his home region of the South).
1992: Columnist Pat Buchanan wins 37% against Bush the Elder in New Hampshire, and lasts long enough to score 17% in New Jersey (whose primary was among the last).
1996: Buchanan actually wins New Hampshire this time, then finishes second in Arizona to another always private citizen – Steve Forbes (who also won Delaware).
2000: Forbes comes second in Iowa with 30-1% percent.
In other words, Republicans have been comfortable with never-hold-office candidates for a while. I suspect for two reasons.
Republicans define “one of us” differently than Democrats: For Democrats, candidates can appeal to be “one of us” if they are not or were not wealthy. Wealthy Democrats almost never run populist-style campaigns for office; usually they run as technocrats. Republicans, by contrast, have long had an internal divide between the “establishment wing” and the “conservative wing” – as Buchanan himself called them way back in 1988. Candidates who have never held office thus have greater appeal. None other than William F. Buckley, Jr., proved this in his quixotic campaign for Mayor of New York in 1965 (albeit as the Conservative Party nominee), having made his name in part by claiming he’d rather be governed by the first 200 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard University.
More importantly, though, these candidates have no records, meaning there are no difficult votes to explain, no actions that reveal a voter’s priority is not his or hers, etc. Candidates like these are “blank slates”, onto which voters can assume whatever they want. This phenomenon can usually be seen in general election polling when “unnamed Republican” or “unnamed Democrat” does far better than an actual human being.
Given the above, Trump’s ascension is no surprise. In fact, history shows he is actually underperforming for candidates in his role.
So why is he in the lead? Simple, there are sixteen other major candidates running. Not only does the law of averages make it more difficult for any of them to make headway on Trump, but many of them are “fishing in the same lake.”
Take a look at the latest Real Clear Politics average for the New Hampshire primary. Trump is at 24.5%, but behind him are four Governors (current and former) who have some appeal among the mass of voters in the center of the Republican Party (Bush, Kasich, Walker, and Christie). Among them, they have over 34%, which would easily put Trump in second place if only one of them were running. In Iowa, where social conservatives usually hold sway, the most identifiable “socon” candidates (Cruz, Huckabee, Jindal, and Santorum) share about 16%, enough to be in the margin of error against Trump…if they weren’t all running.
In time, as the candidates inevitably shrink in number, establishment, so-con, and economic conservative voters will coalesce around the last of their kind standing (and several candidates can appeal to more than one of these groups, including my choice – Marco Rubio). Trump’s lead is merely the result of a plethora of aspirants, because unlike his predecessors noted above, he has a knack for alienating people, including Republican voters.
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