A new CBS News/YouGov poll found 67% of Republican voters don’t believe President Biden won the 2020 election fair and square, suggesting former President Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud still have momentum.
A new Ipsos poll found that that 50% of Republicans believe former President Donald Trump should be the role model for the Republican party.
A new CBS News/YouGov poll finds 53% if Republicans think the party should focus on messaging to expand its appeal, while 47% think the party should focus on changing voting rules to try to win with the voters it has.
NEW YORK CITY MAYOR — The Democratic firm Change Research’s new survey of the June 22 Democratic primary finds Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams leading 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang 19-16, with city Comptroller Scott Stringer at 9%. After the poll simulates the instant runoff process, Adams is left with a 53-47 edge over Yang. Change tells us that, while this was conducted as part of a larger survey for a client, the pollster paid for the horserace portion itself.
“Former President Donald Trump ventures back onto the campaign trail next month, addressing a Republican Party convention in a key swing state: North Carolina,” USA Today reports.
“Trump is to speak at a June 5 dinner during that weekend’s North Carolina Republican Party state convention.”
“North Carolina is central to Republican efforts to regain control of Congress in the 2022 elections. Trump carried the state in both of his presidential campaigns, each race being a close one.”
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) “says he doubts that former President Donald Trump will remain the GOP’s ‘de facto’ leader by the next presidential election, and he said the party should reject Trump’s populist message in favor of a traditional small-government approach as it looks toward the 2022 midterm elections,” Bloomberg reports.
Of course, Toomey voted to impeach Trump and is retiring in 2022, so he’s likely just hoping aloud.
The Rev. Franklin Graham told Axios that a potential 2024 presidential bid by Donald Trump would “be a very tough thing to do.” Said Graham: “If he still has energy and strength like he does. I don’t. You know the guy does not eat well, you know, and it’s amazing the energy that he has.”
MICHIGAN GOVERNOR — A new poll from Target Insyght for MIRS News finds Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer up 48-42 on outgoing Detroit police Chief James Craig, who is considering seeking the Republican nomination. The same survey (which is our first of the race) also finds Whitmer beating Army veteran John James by a wider 49-39 margin. James was the GOP’s Senate nominee in both 2018 and 2020, though he hasn’t yet publicly expressed any interest in a possible gubernatorial bid.
GEORGIA U.S. SENATOR — Rep. Buddy Carter appears to have gotten his hands on a cellphone number that his fellow Republicans have had a hard time getting ahold of: The southwest Georgia congressman says he’s had “a number of conversations” with former NFL star Herschel Walker, who’s been encouraged by Donald Trump to run for Senate but hasn’t been in communication with top GOP operatives about his intentions.
Carter, however, says that Walker, who lives in Texas, told him that he’ll make some sort of decision “around the first of the summer.” (Since “summer” isn’t a month, we’ll mark that down as June 20, the summer solstice.) Like all Peach State Republicans, Carter is eagerly awaiting a final announcement from Walker, who’s largely frozen the Senate field. Carter himself says he’s already prepped a campaign team for his own Senate bid but that he’s “waiting on Herschel” before entering the race.
TEXAS GOVERNOR — “Even as Greg Abbott and many fellow Republicans were still basking in what they called Texas’ ‘most conservative 48 hours’ in history, a former one-term state senator announced he would challenge the governor from the right in next year’s GOP primary,” the Austin American Statesman reports.
“Don Huffines, a scion of a Dallas family that made its fortune in the auto dealership business and a co-founder of a prosperous real estate development company, announced his candidacy in a series of tweets and retweets Monday. He promised “to finish the wall,” eliminate property taxes and protect “election integrity.”
TEXAS ATTORNEY GENERAL — Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush (R) “is sending strong signals that he’s preparing to launch a primary challenge against Attorney General Ken Paxton, hoping it can center on Paxton’s legal troubles and how he has run his office,” the Texas Tribune reports.
NEW HAMPSHIRE U.S. SENATOR / GOVERNOR — Politico: “Sununu has the potential to be the most important Republican recruit of the cycle. He’s an incumbent three-term governor fresh off a 30-plus-point victory last year in a state Biden carried with relative ease. And he’s political royalty in the Granite State, the son of a former governor and White House chief of staff as well as the brother of a former senator.”
Politico: “Interviews with more than 25 GOP strategists and party officials depict a president whose avuncular style and genial bearing make him a less-than-ideal foil.”
“In response, Republicans are preparing to break with time-honored custom and cast the president less as the central character in the midterm elections than as an accessory to the broader excesses of the left.”
Ask a bunch of voters how likely they’re to vote six months from now, and you’ll get a decent (but not particularly helpful) snapshot of the electorate. After all, a lot can change in six months. This far out, you’d prefer data that is “locked in” for the future and not subject to much change.
That’s why this graphic from the Virginia Public Access Project showing the number of candidates for Virginia’s House of Delegates (out of 100 possible seats) is so striking.
It’s not a perfect metric, but for Virginia, it’s been fairly predicative of how engaged parties will be come November. As you can see, Trump’s election in 2016 sent Democratic mobilization through the roof. It’s how Democrats won so big in 2017 and could take the General Assembly in 2019.
And as one might expect, Biden’s election has had a similar effect on the GOP, which has seen its number of contested seats for 2021 skyrocket. But crucially for Democrats, this data makes it look like Trump never left. They’re quite literally maxed out in terms of contested seats.
It’s just one data point, but if activist and organized Democrats are showing any signs of demobilization, we’re not seeing it here.
NEVADA GOVERNOR — North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee (R) will run for Nevada governor in 2022 as a Republican, he has confirmed to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Lee announced in April his official switch from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.
FLORIDA 13TH CD — Democratic state Rep. Michele Rayner, who’d reportedly been considering a bid for Florida’s open 13th District, now confirms that she is in fact looking at the race. Another Democrat, term-limited St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman, has also made it clear that he’s weighing a campaign; his earlier comments had us slotting him into the “hasn’t ruled it out” category, which we regard as a notch below on the level-of-interest scale.
GEORGIA 10TH CD — State Rep. Timothy Barr has entered the race for Georgia’s open 10th Congressional District, making him the second notable Republican to join after former Rep. Paul Broun.
VIRGINIA GOVENOR — Former Republican Rep. Denver Riggleman, who’d been threatening to run for governor as an independent, says he’s less likely to do so now that the GOP has tapped finance executive Glenn Youngkin as its nominee. “If Amanda Chase or Pete Snyder won,” he told CBS’s Aaron Navarro, “I would have more heavily considered it.” Riggleman has until the June 8 filing deadline for independents to decide.
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