August chairs survey: Not much change, but movement for Haley, Ramaswamy
Trump still expected to be nominee
The latest results of my survey of county Republican Party chairs across the US are now up at Politico. A few main points you’ll find in there:
Still only roughly half of county chairs say they’re committed to a presidential candidate. Among that half, Trump is the clear leader, although his support (and DeSantis’) are largely unchanged since June.
As with the three previous waves of the survey, more county chairs say they’re considering Ron DeSantis than say they’re considering any other candidate, although his numbers have been dropping since the spring.
The candidates whom the most chairs do not want to see become the nominee remain those who have criticized Trump: Chris Christie, Asa Hutchinson, and Mike Pence. Although Trump is still quite high on this measure.
Below is a plot showing the percent of chairs considering a candidate along the horizontal axis and the percent opposed to the candidate on the vertical axis. Each candidate appears twice, with hollow dots representing their numbers in the June survey and solid dots the August survey. The arrows show just how much movement has occurred. Generally speaking, the best candidates can do is to move downward and rightward – lowering the number of chairs who oppose them while improving the number who are considering them.
By this standard, Nikki Haley had a very good two months, and is now joining Tim Scott and Ron DeSantis among those with low disapproval and high interest. (Much of this movement from Haley, interestingly, came prior to her debate performance in late August.) Vivek Ramaswamy saw both his positives and negatives increase. Trump mainly saw his negatives grow, although obviously remains in a strong position.