Another week, another Presidential primary. Yesterday, it was in Pennsylvania, and Benedict Donald continued to underperform. At this point, though, perhaps you'd just want to say the Republican results showed the latest example of a full-blown anti-Trump protest vote.
Yes, Trump won the primary and all of the commonwealth's 16 delegates to the convention. But Nikki Haley, who dropped out of the race more than a month ago, pulled in 157,388 votes* — nearly 17 percent. This was in a closed primary, with no Democratic voters making mischief, so you have to believe something's going on here.
Voting against Benedict Donald has been pretty consistent in GOP-only primaries and caucuses this year, in fact. It was 15 percent against him in Idaho, 18 percent in Oklahoma, almost 20 percent in Tennessee, and a whopping 44 percent in Utah (before Haley withdrew her candidacy). After that, she still pulled 19 percent in Florida, about 25 percent in Connecticut, 22 percent in New York, and now this.
The numbers from Pennsylvania were especially striking because Republicans voted for Haley not just in the Philadelphia suburbs, but also in Cumberland County outside Harrisburg, and the counties of Lancaster, Erie and Berks, all of which are traditionally swingy.
Which means that even with getting 83 percent of the overall vote, Benedict Donald has a real base problem. Political journalism in the US is pretty awful, so don't expect to see a lot of reporters chasing this story. They need their likes and clicks, so they'll always try to prop up Trump as a powerful, competitive candidate. The reality is that he's got a splintered and angry GOP, very little money, deteriorating cognition, and four criminal trials, one of which is underway and already doing damage. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.
*Fun fact: Joe Biden won Pennsylvania in the 2020 general election by about 80,000 votes. We cats PURR.
No comments:
Post a Comment