How to beat Trump in the primary: Win the middle, not the base

The traditional way to win a primary election is to rally your party’s base. While there is plenty of support for that strategy down ballot, it has not been the case for GOP presidential primaries in the last three cycles — and certainly not in the Trump era. A better strategy is to build a broader primary coalition by taking advantage of open primaries and laws allowing later voter registration. The non-Trump Republican candidates should follow this path to overcome the entrenched MAGA base of the GOP.

In the 2023 legislative session, states enacted almost 100 bills that expanded access to voter registration, and many more that expanded access to mail-in voting. Sixteen states have some form of same-day registration or permit registration within a week of Election Day. Many others allow registration within two weeks of Election Day: Three of the early GOP primaries (Iowa, New Hampshire and Michigan) are in that category.

State primary elections are trending away from the traditional closed-primary format. Just seven states have closed primaries where only registered party members can vote, and nine states have partially closed primaries where unaffiliated voters may vote but opposing party members cannot. The rest have at least partially open primaries, and most states’ primary systems apply to presidential elections. With the exception of Idaho and Nevada, each of the early presidential primary or caucus states are at least partially open to unaffiliated or opposing party voters. Now more than ever, voter affiliation is fungible and polling consistently shows that party support or leanings flip back and forth between Democrats and Republicans, sometimes as frequently as month to month.

The Republican presidential candidates are fixated on pulling support from former President Trump. Look at how they have reacted to the various criminal filings against Trump — Vivek Ramaswamy, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and others have tried to walk the fine line between attacking the front-runner while still appearing simpatico with the Trump base. Yet nobody has successfully closed the gap with Trump as the campaign moves ever closer to the first primaries. In last week’s GOP presidential debate, Haley was the first candidate to go after Trump by name and spent much of her speaking time taking positions at odds with the Trump base, yet she has seen bumps in national and early primary polls since Wednesday.

In any given poll, the “always Trump” base represents about a third of the GOP. In 2016, Trump cleared the field in delegates at the nominating convention but only had a plurality of the popular vote. He regularly won with around a third of any given primary vote, beating out his opponents, who split the majority. His 2016 rivals tried to court his base and believed that the last man standing would have the advantage of the two-thirds who did not support Trump. However, each of them ran out of time and none could outlast Trump’s unfocused, ad hominem attack strategy.

In Trump’s case, he ran against the base of the party by attacking “establishment” candidates and ideas. He generated enthusiasm and activism out of a broader resentment of Washington. Open primaries and broader appeal carried him to the finish line without him needing a majority. In the previous election cycles, Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Mitt Romney (Utah) were also at odds with the GOP base — yet they still got nominated.

DeSantis, governor of Florida, won reelection in a landslide in 2022 by appealing to a broad base of voters across Florida. Exit polls show he took 45 percent of moderates, 53 percent of women (48 percent independent), 58 percent of independent men, and 58 percent of Florida’s suburbs. He lost only four counties, compared to 13 in 2018, and performed an average of almost 9 points better in each. DeSantis has a strong record on basic issues like the budget, infrastructure, emergency response, energy and the economy. While his star has risen as a firebrand on cultural issues, fundamentally he is just a good governor.

Americans yearn for conservative solutions on many of our most important issues. Democrats are losing more and more ground on the economy, budget, immigration and even education. Their only advantage is that they get to run against a more and more Trumpian Republican Party.

There is no reason that DeSantis, a successful governor with proven appeal across multiple demographics, cannot campaign to a (currently) undefined primary electorate that may come out in force, whether to support him directly or to get rid of Trump. That broad coalition can be successful in its own right without the entrenched MAGA base. As it stands, the alternative for DeSantis and the other GOP candidates is to keep courting that base and continue their dormancy unless and until primary surprises manifest.

The past three nominating cycles have led to GOP candidates rising above the party’s primary base. In the Trump era, playing “wait and see” is a failed strategy, and someone needs to take on the challenge of attacking him and risk offending his base. This would be unprecedented, but it is the only way forward. DeSantis seems the best poised to start trying.

Richard Protzmann is an attorney in Southern California and an in-house attorney for an e-commerce company in San Diego. He has been published with the Washington Times, National Interest, Marine Corps Gazette, Task & Purpose and other outlets.