A slight majority of Republicans said they want to see a “fresh face” run for President in 2024, while one-third indicated they would like to see “a candidate who has already run in the past,” says a December 21-2 poll by Rasmussen Reports.
The question in the poll of 1,000 likely voters offered room for still-mourning Republicans to show support for a 2024 candidate younger than departing President Donald Trump, who would turn 78 during the 2024 race, and turn 82 in 2028.
The “fresh face” option was picked by 52 percent of Republicans and 49 percent of conservatives.
The “run in the past” candidate was picked by 33 percent of Republicans and 36 percent of Conservatives, likely indicating strong personal support for President Trump.
Fifteen percent of both groups said they were unsure.
The shift towards a “fresh face,” however, is accompanied by the overwhelming support for a Trump-like populist politician. For example, the same Rasmussen poll asked, “As the Republican Party reorganizes itself next year, should it be more like President Trump or more like the average GOP member of Congress?”
Republicans overwhelmingly picked the populist “more like President Trump” option, by 72 percent to 24 percent, while conservatives split 67 percent to 28 percent.
The poll comes as Democrats worry about the 2024 strength of the populist movement created by Trump and his activists and voters.
Under the headline, “Democrats see grim prospects in final election results despite Biden’s win,” the Washington Post reported December 21:
“We won back the House and the White House in the suburbs, but my sense is we are leasing that support — we don’t own it,” said Robby Mook, the manager of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign who led the House Majority PAC this cycle. “With Trump gone, that lease is up for renewal. If we don’t hold on to our gains in the suburbs or replace it by winning back working-class White voters, we will have a problem.”
“One of the big questions is whether a Trumpist 2024 candidate can be a little bit milder so as to not alienate the suburbs, yet still inspire the low-propensity Republicans to vote at 2020 levels,” J.J. Balaban, a Democratic strategist in Pennsylvania,” told the New York Times in November. “If they can pull that off, it’s going to be a very hard environment for Democrats.”
Democrats are ‘gloomy’ about the strength of Trump’s populism, says WashPo, echoing NYTimes.
As usual, Jeff Bezos’s journalist downplays the economic harm of migration — so he misses the potential populist appeal to discarded college grads.https://t.co/5arZtKrH9R— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) December 28, 2020
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