Donald’s Trump’s non-competition: What’s driving hopeless Republicans to run

Somehow Donald Trump is right. Why should he take part in a TV debate when he leads with “50, 60, according to a survey at 70” percentage points compared to the “eight, ten people” (he doesn’t even know exactly how many are there)? And that too at Fox: A station that was “not exactly friendly” to him.

While opinion maker Tucker Carlson (whom Fox wasn’t exactly friendly to either) rolled out the verbal carpet for the lone lead candidate and Trump, as expected, talked fuzzy, eight (there are eight) Fox candidates were fighting for every second of speaking time. Of these eight pretty best enemies, realistically speaking, none, at most one, poses a real threat to the quadruple indicted ex-president.

This begs the question: why run at all? Why do these hopeless, these long-shot candidates venture into a maelstrom of stress, wear and tear and humiliation, when in the end they can only fail miserably?

Donald Trump and the Republicans: many opponents, little competition

According to data from the US website Fivethirtyeight, the approval ratings for the ten strongest Trump followers total just 41 percent. Trump alone brings 52 percentage points to the voter scale. Even the most unfavorable from Trump’s point of view forecasts see him ahead of runner-up Ron DeSantis by at least 37 percentage points. The latter was long considered the only real alternative. In mid-February, Florida’s governor and ex-president were almost level. After that, things went steeply downhill for the “Trump with a brain” and continuously uphill for the original Trump. Even hitherto well-disguised opponents such as spanking rhetorician Vivek Ramaswamy apparently squandered in the fan base of the culture fighter from the South.

The rest of the hunting party is trailing behind in the mid single-digit percentage range: Trump’s ex-vice president Mike Pence, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, the only black Republican Senator Tim Scott or former New Jersey governor Chris Christie.

This is followed by the real ultra long shots, the blind among the lame. The average US voter should only know names like Asa Hutchinson, Will Hurd or Doug Burgum from one sentence: I don’t know Asa Hutchinson, Will Hurd or Doug Burgum.

The pecking order in the field of applicants has hardly changed for months. Even then it won’t. If nothing absolutely unexpected happens, Trump wins the race.

Republican Presidential Candidates: Four Reasons for a Lost Fight

In fact, the hats are stacked in the right ring. Dozens of conservatives want to run for the White House for the Grand Old Party. Including many men and women few have ever heard of who fly so low under the radar that polls don’t pick them up.

Basically, it is normal that there are still many (shaky) candidates at this point, explains Timothy Hagle, a political scientist at the University of Iowa star. The field of applicants will be greatly thinned out in the course of the first internal party screening processes. Events like the Iowa Caucus in mid-January are there to separate the wheat from the chaff.

But there are reasons to fight this hopeless battle. Here are the most important:

Reason 1: Real hope

Yes, they exist, the dreamers. Some of the actually hopeless candidates are likely to believe in their victory regardless of the poll numbers. When asked about this, they like to refer to those underdogs who made it after all – miracle winners like Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama or Donald Trump.

No candidate would openly admit to being satisfied with a certificate of participation. “You wouldn’t say he’s going to win the Super Bowl in February and we’re just going to cancel the season,” said candidate Doug Burgum, who is down 0.5 percent, according to polls. “No, you play the game.”

For falling stars like DeSantis, there’s no going back anyway. Its best, but probably only selling point, turns out to be its greatest weakness. He made his mark as the eligible, less embarrassing, Donald Trump. But all too many voters asked themselves the question: Why take the knockoff when the original is available?

Reason 2: Welcome spotlight

“A lot of these candidates who run for president aren’t really running for president,” Hagl said. They see their candidacy more as a welcome opportunity to distinguish themselves, to gain a foothold, to make a name for themselves on the national stage.

For some of them, the candidacy has already become something of a tradition. They cast the net every four years hoping something will stick for them or themselves. “Politics is an industry. People have to keep their names fresh,” political expert Curtis Loftis told the New York Times (NYT). Not infrequently, candidates who do not ultimately make it to the party’s undisputed favorite later enjoy a lucrative position in the private sector – or they end up in the media as influential commentators.

Reason 3: Agenda setting

Certainly not all applicants run for purely opportunistic reasons. Some of them want to focus on certain topics. Topics that would have no chance of being in the national spotlight in normal political operations. The idea: the “little man” can still say what the big ones don’t dare to say. The better chances a candidate has, the more careful he has to be. The more votes he has, the greater the fear of losing them. Polarization can do more harm than good at a certain level.

The lone wolves, these lone fighters who are often unwilling to compromise, can force the “real” candidates to make room for their ideology, to take up their agenda. For example, Democrat veteran Bernie Sanders managed to move the party line a bit to the left in 2020 – simply because he was a candidate.

Reason 4: Collect ammo

If you want to go to the Oval Office, you usually take more than one detour. For the majority of applicants, defeat is not the end, but the beginning. The more promising among the hopeless are squinting at sizeable consolation prizes – a post in the cabinet, even the vice presidency. “If you can’t get to the moon, you can at least land in the stars,” said candidate advisor Sarah Isgur in the “NYT”.

In the end, most of the losers will rally behind Trump. But the more votes they collect by then, the more expensive they can sell their loyalty. Tim Scott and Nikky Haley are likely to be such candidates. And Joe Biden recently proved that the journey does not have to end in second place in the long term.

The more hopeless the rest, the more promising Trump

Donald Trump is confident of victory. That’s not only part of his character, but also part of the truth. Almost every serious forecast puts it well beyond the magical 50 percent mark.

But that also means that around half of conservative Americans do not want Trump. But the other half just doesn’t know what they want. Instead of giving their favor to a single strong opponent, the potential voters are still searching for information.

Trump is enormously accommodated by a bouquet of candidates that is as colorful as possible. The more applicants, the more divided the voters. The more divided the voters, the less likely there is real competition.

But who knows? Americans love a good outsider story. Trump wrote one of them.

Sources: “New York Times“; “TheWeek“; “conversation“; “FiveThirtyEight“