Why Trump Is Winning the Primary—So Far

In a decade and a half of punditry, I’ve had to eat my share of crow for incorrectly predicting voter behavior. I was notably wrong about Brexit and wrong about the 2016 U.S. presidential election, calling them for Remain and Hillary, respectively. The opinion writer’s weakness for wishcasting is partly to blame. But voter preferences can also change quite rapidly. What polls suggest today can be completely upended tomorrow, let alone in several weeks or months.

Having said all that—deep breath—I think Donald Trump is poised to sweep next year’s GOP primary. Or as The New York Times put it in a headline summarizing the paper’s own recent polling, the forty-fifth president is “crushing” his primary rivals. Along the way, Trump is also crushing the dream of many conservative professionals: to find a more “responsible” Trump, someone who could channel the same populist energies, but in a more “disciplined” manner.

Ron DeSantis became the locus of such dreams, and it isn’t hard to see why. The Florida governor has boldly confronted the right’s bogeys: from mask and vaccine scolds to the professors, and from woke corporations to the 1619 Project. In the Sunshine State, he whips the media and the opposition (I repeat myself), but he can also reach across the aisle to get things done. And he does it all with bureaucratic competence and mastery over a pliant legislature.