Will Trump inevitably be the GOP nominee? Here’s the case for and against

Former President Trump’s dominance of the GOP field was underscored by a new poll released Monday.

The New York Times/Siena College poll showed Trump leading his closest rival for the nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, by a massive 37 points.

In the poll, Trump drew 54 percent support and DeSantis 17 percent. No other candidate registered higher than 3 percent support.

The poll was far from an outlier. Trump has maintained a lead of roughly 30 points over DeSantis in national polling averages for some time. There is no convincing evidence that any other contender is acquiring real momentum.

Given that Trump is showing such strength even while he has been indicted in two criminal cases, the question arises as to whether he is all but inevitable as the GOP nominee.

Here are the main arguments for and against that idea.

Trump is the inevitable nominee because…

His support looks rock-solid

Trump’s biggest political asset has been clear for years. His base voters are avid in their support and near-impervious to any negative information about him.

It’s more than seven years since then-candidate Trump told a crowd in Iowa, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”

Today, he stands accused of obstruction of justice and a series of other serious offenses in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. He is also charged with falsifying business records in a separate New York case.

Among Republicans, it hasn’t mattered.

In the New York Times poll, 71 percent of potential Republican primary voters said the GOP needed “to stand behind Trump” amid his charges, whereas only 22 percent argued there was no obligation to do so. 

The exact same share — 71 percent — asserted that Trump was innocent of any “serious federal crimes.”

A general election would be a very different matter. But, within the GOP, there is every reason to think Trump has a lock on enough voters to carry him to the nomination. 

His main rival is doing very poorly

DeSantis’s weakness has been a bigger surprise than Trump’s strength so far.

The Florida governor launched his campaign May 24 with a Twitter Spaces event marred by technical glitches. It was a sign of things to come.

DeSantis’s poll ratings have eroded over the two months-plus of his campaign to date. The national polling average maintained by data site FiveThirtyEight showed him drawing roughly 21 percent support on the day of his launch. He is now at roughly 16 percent.

The polling slide has been accompanied by broader campaign troubles. A recent series of staffing cuts has reduced his team by about one-third.

DeSantis’s backers publicly evince confidence that they are building a campaign for the long haul and that it will all come right in the end. The governor laid out an economic agenda in a New Hampshire speech Monday.

But as of today, DeSantis has seriously underperformed.

That’s very good news for Trump.

GOP voters don’t buy the argument that Trump is unelectable

Trump-skeptical GOP insiders coalesce around one central argument — that the former president would be a weak general election candidate, likely losing a winnable election.

As evidence they cite the 2020 election, when Trump lost the popular vote by more than 7 million votes to President Biden; his false claims of election fraud and the way they fueled the Capitol Riot of Jan. 6, 2021; his many legal challenges; and his low poll ratings among the general public.

In an Economist/YouGov poll released last week, Trump was seen favorably by 40 percent of the general public, and unfavorably by 57 percent. Self-professed independent voters broke against him on that question by almost 2-to-1.

But the GOP primary electorate, by and large, just doesn’t buy it. They believe Trump can defy the polls and pundits again, just as he did when defeating Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The New York Times poll asked Republican voters whether Trump or DeSantis was better “able to beat Joe Biden.”

Fifty-eight percent went for Trump compared to 28 percent for DeSantis.

Unless those figures change drastically, it’s tough to see how Trump loses the nomination battle.

Trump is not the inevitable nominee because….

The campaign has barely begun

Today’s intense media coverage of every step of every campaign tends to lead to sweeping predications.

Many of those forecasts might seem premature.

The Iowa caucuses are more than five months away — an eternity in politics. The Republican National Convention, at which the nominee will be formally crowned, is almost a year away.

For the moment, Trump likely accrues some benefit from his near-universal name recognition. 

In another Economist/YouGov poll earlier this month, the proportion of Republicans who said they didn’t know enough to express an opinion of a particular candidate stood at 9 percent for DeSantis, 21 percent for former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and 27 percent for former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley. 

That gives those candidates room to grow, at least in theory, in a way that isn’t true for Trump.

Trump’s rivals could also hold out hope of game-changing moments during debate season, which is soon to begin. The first clash is set for Aug. 23 in Milwaukee.

Early polls are misleading

Trump’s rivals emphasize that predictions based on early polls in previous years were wrong. 

That’s true — sort of. But it’s not quite so hard-and-fast a rule as the Trump skeptics claim.

In fact, in two of the last three contested Republican presidential primaries, the eventual winner was already leading the RealClearPolitics average at this point.

Trump had just burst into the lead in 2016, never to surrender it; and in 2012, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney had already established a lead, which he would lose and regain. Romney is now a senator representing Utah.

The sole exception came in 2008, when Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) was in third place and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was leading the field. McCain went on to claim the nomination and Giuliani’s campaign sputtered into oblivion.

It’s not just a matter of polls. Campaigns can sometimes shift on a dime, as happened for the Democrats in 2020. 

Then, Biden looked like a busted flush after trailing in fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire. A win in South Carolina — and a collective quiver of fear among moderate Democrats over the possibility of nominating Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — delivered the nomination to Biden.

Trump’s legal problems are getting worse

Even if Trump’s support has remained solid so far, it may not be destined to remain so.

What happens when the GOP has to focus fully on whether to nominate a candidate who could be convicted of serious offenses by the time Election Day rolls around?

Trump’s trial in the Mar-a-Lago matter has been set for May 20 next year.

Then there is the likelihood of Trump’s other troubles deepening. 

An indictment is widely expected soon over Jan. 6. Trump himself wrote on Truth Social on Monday that he expected an indictment “any day now.”

In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) is wrapping up her probe into attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results in that state. Decisions on charges are expected in the next few weeks.

Every one of those cases, regardless of the verdicts, will put unflattering details of Trump’s behavior back in the spotlight — and could, perhaps, give some Republican voters second thoughts about nominating him.