First Republican debate guide: Four types of GOP primary voters, and just how solid is that Trump vote?

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Former President Donald Trump has such a big lead in the Republican nomination contest — and is, voters tell us, such a dominant topic of the campaign — that we can even define primary voter segments around him. That helps explore just how solid his support really is. Trump has the lion’s share of the vote and he has even more people considering him — so his lead could grow.

Most Republican primary voters planning to watch the debate are at least considering other candidates. It doesn’t mean they would prefer someone other than Trump, but they at least signal an openness to the possibility. The challenge for other candidates is that most voters want someone similar to Trump, while Trump himself is running.

So, here are the four groups, which we have named, based on our most recent polling and informed by our two previous waves of GOP polling this year. CONTINUED

Anthony Salvanto & Kabir Khanna, CBS News

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At the first Republican debate what policy goals do voters want to hear? Stopping abortions isn’t a top one

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… Fewer than half the GOP primary electorate would prefer a nominee who supports a national abortion ban, and for many others, policy on that doesn’t matter either way. Our latest CBS News Poll asked Republican primary voters about a range of policy goals and how important it is to hear about the candidates’ plans to achieve them. Plans to stop abortions ranked the lowest in importance of any policy goal asked about. Other policies, like plans to lower inflation, stop immigration and reduce violent crime were at the top.

The abortion issue motivated Democrats in the 2022 midterms, keeping them competitive, and after the passage of a string of state ballot measures protecting abortion rights, the issue of abortion is not an especially salient one among the GOP primary electorate right now. CONTINUED

Jennifer De Pinto, CBS News

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Explaining Republican Loyalty to Trump: The Crucial Role of Negative Partisanship

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Key Points
• Negative partisanship — the tendency for partisans to be animated by dislike for the other side — has become a powerful force in American politics.
• This dynamic makes it harder for partisans to cross over to the other side and keeps general elections quite competitive.
• Attacks on Donald Trump by Democrats, liberals, and mainstream media figures and even indictments by federal and state prosecutors on serious criminal charges have only served to reinforce the loyalty of Republican voters to Trump. CONTINUED

Alan I. Abramowitz (Emory), Sabato’s Crystal Ball

The OPINION TODAY email newsletter is a concise daily rundown of significant new poll results and insightful analysis. Sign up here: opiniontoday.substack

Why Republican voters believe Trump

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When the Republican presidential candidates gather for their first debate this week, the encounter is likely to center on the legal problems of the man all of them are chasing.

Former President Donald Trump has solidified his lead in the GOP race by convincing most Republican voters to view his four criminal indictments as a politicized “witch hunt” aimed not only at him, but them.

Trump’s success in selling that argument to GOP voters has some immediate causes, key among them the choice by all of his leading competitors in the race, as well as most prominent voices in conservative media, to echo rather than challenge his contention. But the inclination of so many Republican voters to dismiss all of the charges accumulating against Trump also reflects something much more fundamental: the hardening tendency of conservatives to believe that they are the real victims of bias in a society irreversibly growing more racially and culturally diverse. CONTINUED

Ronald Brownstein, CNN

The OPINION TODAY email newsletter is a concise daily rundown of significant new poll results and insightful analysis. Sign up here: opiniontoday.substack

Iowa poll: Trump challengers face huge climb to stop him in first GOP contest

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Former President Donald Trump starts out with more than a 20-point lead over nearest rival Ron DeSantis among likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers, according to the first 2024 NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll conducted by Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer.

Trump’s early advantage in the first nominating contest — which proved to be one of his toughest states the last time he faced a competitive race for the GOP nomination — is the largest Republican caucus lead recorded by the poll since the 2000 contest won by George W. Bush. CONTINUED

Mark Murray, Alex Tabet & Jillian Frankel, NBC News

The OPINION TODAY email newsletter is a concise daily rundown of significant new poll results and insightful analysis. Sign up here: opiniontoday.substack

Trump Is Beatable in Iowa

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The recent history of the Iowa Republican caucus offers the candidates chasing former President Donald Trump one big reason for optimism. But that history also presents them with an even larger reason for concern.

In each of the past three contested GOP nomination fights, Iowa Republicans have rejected the candidate considered the national front-runner in the race, as Trump is now. Instead, in each of those three past caucuses, Iowa Republicans delivered victory to an alternative who relied primarily on support from the state’s powerful bloc of evangelical Christian conservatives.

But each of those three recent Iowa winners failed to capture the Republican presidential nomination or, in the end, even to come very close. All three of them were eventually defeated, handily, by the front-runner that they beat in Iowa. CONTINUED

Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic

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