Rival candidates will need to figure out some creative strategies to get the attention of the media and of voters.
There was a lot of debate when Donald Trump was indicted in the classified-documents case as to whether the prosecution would boost him as Republican voters rallied in solidarity, or hurt him by adding to questions about his electability. But as we approach three weeks since the indictment, the numbers suggest that the news hasn’t boosted him per se but that it has frozen the race in place — which is just as good for a campaign that is already way ahead of the competition.
On June 9, the day the indictment came out, Trump was polling at 54 percent in the RealClearPolitics national average, giving him a 30.3-point lead over Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who was polling at 23.7 percent. Now, Trump is at 52.2 percent and DeSantis is at 21.5 percent, which works out to a nearly identical 30.6-point lead.
The difficulty for Trump’s rivals is that, once the indictment broke, the story immediately became the focal point of attention in the race. DeSantis vaulted himself to national prominence through his ability to pick battles (especially on Covid and the culture war) that garnered attention in a way that drove the right people insane and endeared him to conservatives. But something like his legal battle with Disney is small potatoes compared with a former president being under federal indictment. Thus, following the initial publicity generated by his launch announcement in late May, DeSantis has had a hard time breaking through.
Erick Erickson observes a similar patten in the early primary states:
At some point this does become self-fulfilling if others in the race cannot shake up the dynamic. More and more people are starting to conclude Trump is unstoppable. Once that opinion is firmly locked in, it is harder to shake up the dynamic. https://t.co/qrCfcGLclx
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) June 28, 2023
It’s hard to “shake up the dynamic” when the other campaigns are being drowned out by Trump news. Additionally, what should trouble other candidates is that this story is not the sort that is simply going to go away. On top of the documents case, Trump has been charged in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case, is still being investigated in Georgia for illegal meddling in the 2020 election, and is appealing the judgment of a jury against him in the E. Jean Carroll sexual-assault case (he just launched a countersuit). Given that these four cases are happening simultaneously, and there will likely be some developments every few weeks, we can expect that at any given time during the primaries, there will be news in at least one of them.
So rival candidates will need to figure out some creative strategies to get the attention of the media and of voters, or else they won’t even be in a position to make their cases.