Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Ryan Binkley. No? Let’s try another: Perry Johnson. Was that a glimmer of recognition that flashed across your face? Steve Laffey. I hear no bells ringing, not even a hand chime. Corey Stapleton. A blanker look than an unplugged TV. Francis Suarez. No sale. Will Hurd. I guess you didn’t hear me. Mike Rogers. Yeah, I’m not sure which Mike Rogers, either. Larry Elder. Finally, someone you’ve heard of. Maybe.
I won’t leave you in suspense any longer. These men are all declared or prospective candidates for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. That’s eight names already, and I haven’t even gotten to the rest of the best, those who by dint of populating the bottom rungs of the polls have had conferred upon them the imprimatur of “major candidate,” the likes of Chris Christie, Asa Hutchinson, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Doug Burgum, let alone the actual major candidates: Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and Mike Pence.
THE GOP FIELD HAS A TRUMP DILEMMA THAT THE LATEST INDICTMENT HAS ONLY MADE WORSE
That’s 17 people. The same number as in 2016. We know how that turned out. The conventional wisdom is that it will turn out the same the second time around. The conventional wisdom is wrong. The 2024 Republican primary will not be a repeat of 2016. There are a host of reasons this is so, but the biggest one is the field itself. The collection of candidates for 2024 may be clowns, but this time there’s no car.
The media have been anticipating a pileup almost since the 2024 race began. A crowded and divided field threatens to prevent Republicans from “coalescing around a single rival” and hand the nomination to Trump again, the Associated Press warned last July. Since then, that consensus has been reinforced by a regular procession of articles playing variations on the theme, “Why a crowded 2024 GOP field could clear the path for Trump — again,” as the Hill put it recently. The burgeoning roster is the “latest obstacle to defeating Trump” for Republicans, who fear that “every new entrant will dilute the anti-Trump vote, making it easier for the former president to triumph,” according to the Boston Globe.
It’s time to wave a red flag on the “2016 redux” narrative.” This cycle may bear a surface resemblance to 2016, but a surface resemblance is all it is. From the size and shape of the field to the quality and standing of the candidates, the fundamental structure of the 2024 race is different than that of 2016’s.
For one thing, 2024’s pool of aspirants is already smaller. Seventeen people entered the race in 2015, but only 12 made it to Iowa. So far, in 2023, the number of serious contestants is nine: Trump, DeSantis, Haley, Scott, Pence, Ramaswamy, Christie, Burgum, and Hutchinson. And several of them can only be included by applying a lenient definition of “serious.”
Besides Trump, 2016’s cast included Scott Walker, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Jeb Bush, and Ben Carson. Although it’s become a punchline, the GOP bench in 2016 really was deep, replete with governors and senators from big, important states. These were figures of national stature in the party. The roster for 2024 in comparison is a team of career minor-leaguers. Back then, the 10th candidate was someone like Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a onetime conservative superstar. This time, the 10th candidate is talk radio host and California recall loser Larry Elder. If history is repeating, this is the farce version.
Polls also show a stark contrast between 2024 and 2016. Only two candidates are in double digits in the RealClearPolitics average as of June 14: Trump at 52% and DeSantis at 22%. No one else breaks 5%. On June 16, 2015, the day Trump descended the escalator, Bush led the Republican field at 10.8%, followed by Walker with 10.6%, and Rubio with 10%. Carson, Huckabee, Rand Paul, and Cruz held the next four spots at 9.4%, 8.6%, 8.2%, and 7%, respectively. Trump pulled ahead just over a month later, but he was still under 20%, with Bush and Walker in double digits a few points behind.
The race, in other words, was fluid and wide open. Trump had a nominal lead, other candidates were right on his heels, and the rest of the field was jumbled together well within striking distance. Today, Trump is a decided front-runner, DeSantis is the clear but distant challenger, and the remainders are so far behind they need a telescope just to see DeSantis, never mind Trump. The story is the same at the state level. Three men received double-digit shares in Iowa in 2016 (Cruz, Trump, and Rubio), and five did so in New Hampshire (Trump, Kasich, Cruz, Bush, and Rubio). This time around, Trump and DeSantis are the only ones who break double digits in the Hawkeye State, while only native son Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH) joins them in the Granite State, or, rather, did.
All of which is to say that contrary to 2016, the 2024 race has already solidified into a two-man contest between Trump and DeSantis, with the understudies fighting each other for third place. Much of the discussion about a large primary field, therefore, has focused not on whether one of the also-rans can challenge Trump but whether they can hurt DeSantis. Just as much as a large field helps Trump, so the conventional wisdom holds, it harms DeSantis.
“The rapidly ballooning field, combined with Trump’s seemingly unbreakable core of support, represents a grave threat to DeSantis, imperiling his ability to consolidate the non-Trump vote, and could mirror the dynamics that powered Trump’s takeover of the party in 2016,” proclaimed Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, and Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times with oracular confidence. It’s basic math: Trump’s voters aren’t going anywhere, so each new entrant can only take a bite out of DeSantis. No one has embraced the formula that more is merrier for Trump and mayhem for DeSantis with greater gusto than the former president, who welcomes additional competitors with statements bragging about how their advent further diminishes DeSantis’s prospects.
That so many candidates were suddenly considering getting into the race was a sign, boasted a Trump confidant to Politico, that “there is blood in the water for DeSantis.” Which sharks were drawn by his blood? Christie, Pence, and Burgum, who combined to barely total 5% in the polls, and that’s mostly Pence. They alone have announced since DeSantis joined the race. And their impact on the contest, to be blunt, will only be slightly greater than a leaf’s on concrete. No doubt many journalists share the conviction espoused by the New York Times’s Jonathan Weisman that each new arrival divides the non-Trump vote “into ever more slender slivers — leaving the former president’s inviolable piece of the pie looking larger and larger with every new candidate,” but there’s simply no evidence that it’s true. The media consensus is utterly at odds with the facts.
Despite chatter about a large field, there still aren’t 10 major candidates in the race. The journalist Jonathan Martin was right when he observed in February that, notwithstanding Republican panic, “the 2024 GOP field is shaping up to be smaller than expected.” One expectation didn’t pan out because another one did: If Trump and DeSantis both run, predicted Stu Rothenberg in March, they “could well take up most of the oxygen in the race, leaving only a few long shots hoping for a miracle.” That’s just what happened.
There are three lanes in the GOP primary race: Trump, DeSantis, and everyone else. “And the more crowded the race is,” acknowledged the authors of Politico Playbook, “the thinner that last lane gets.” Or, to use a zoological metaphor, the also-rans are like hippopotamuses crowded into a shrinking pool during the dry season on the African savanna, while Trump and DeSantis are elephants roaming freely about the land.
One putative contender who opted against wallowing in the muck and mire was Sununu. In taking a pass on 2024, New Hampshire’s governor was following his own advice: It doesn’t matter when someone gets in the race, he’d long said. What matters is knowing when to quit. “Anyone polling in the low single digits by this winter,” he admonished in a Washington Post op-ed announcing his decision, must withdraw. Polling no better than third in his own state and in the low single digits nationally himself, he simply turned the calendar early.
Sununu’s stated reason for bailing is to prevent Trump from winning again with a plurality. “The stakes are too high,” he wrote, “for a crowded field to hand the nomination to a candidate who earns just 35% of the vote.” If a large field aids Trump, then Sununu is doing his part to minimize that risk by personally minimizing the field.
And perhaps more than minimizing it. For if polling in December is the same as it is now, the logic of Sununu’s exhortation that candidates in single digits in December get out of the race would entail culling the entire field save Trump and DeSantis. That’s not a clown car. That’s a two-seater, a coupe or a similarly sporty number.
The also-rans aren’t taking votes from Trump or DeSantis. The only candidates they’re capable of taking votes from are one another. Some of them, being little more than what the conservative commentator Kurt Schlichter dismissed as “consultant fee-generation concepts,” won’t even get the chance to do that as they’ll be out before January.
Burgum, Christie, and Pence. That’s whom DeSantis’s supposed “blood in the water” enticed. Forget sharks — they’re not even minnows. Suarez, the Miami mayor who late last week became the latest to dive in, doesn’t even qualify as a guppy. Forget taking votes from DeSantis. He’ll be competing with Johnson not to dry out in the heat as the water evaporates.
The media’s preferred narrative that the 2024 GOP race is less a sequel than a remake of 2016 has not panned out, largely because DeSantis’s dominance as the main alternative to Trump dissuaded credible challengers. If DeSantis and Trump were genuinely weak, Sununu wouldn’t have sidelined himself. Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) would be running. Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) wouldn’t be musing about possibly getting in, but only after the Virginia legislative elections in November. Not to mention Rubio, Cruz, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), and countless others wouldn’t be biding their time until 2028.
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Instead of such legitimate candidates, a flock of nobodies and nonentities have swooped in precisely because they have no shot and don’t believe that, at the end of the day, they’ll get in DeSantis’s way. They can safely satisfy their egos, chase their obituaries, push their pet causes, or set themselves up for a Cabinet post, book deal, or other gig. Gigs such as the vice presidency, as with Haley and Scott. If Trump wins, he wins. But they’re not jeopardizing DeSantis’s chances by being in the race. National Review columnist Jim Geraghty’s assessment that perhaps “Burgum felt freer to run because he knows deep down that … his candidacy will be so inconsequential that it won’t affect the final outcome” applies to them all.
The 2024 Republican primary is not a replay of 2016 but its reverse: The field isn’t big because these folks think they can win. It’s big because they don’t. This paradox, and not the myths of a clown car and crowded field, is the defining paradigm of the race. Which isn’t to say 2024 won’t end like 2016. But if it does, it will take an entirely different route to get there.
Varad Mehta is a writer and historian. He lives in the Philadelphia area. Find him on Twitter @varadmehta.