Not since Herbert Hoover in 1940 has a former president run to reclaim the office. Not since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 has a former president made it to the general election. Not since Grover Cleveland in 1892 has a former president actually come back to win the White House again, the only chief executive to serve nonconsecutive terms.
What former President Donald Trump is doing is without precedent in the modern primary process. He wants all the benefits of incumbency as he runs his third straight race for the Republican nomination. His last remaining primary opponent, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, wants him to be judged as an incumbent.
But Trump is not the sitting president of the United States. So how should his performance in the 2024 GOP presidential primaries be judged?
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On the positive side of the ledger, Trump is the first nonincumbent to sweep the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. He also won caucuses in Nevada and the Virgin Islands. He has yet to have an opponent come within 10 points of him anywhere, though Haley got close in New Hampshire.
Trump won Iowa by the biggest margin ever, nearly 30 points. That’s more than double the previous record. He received an absolute majority of the vote against multiple candidates.
New Hampshire was closer, but Trump again won a majority and received the highest number of raw votes ever recorded in the primary. Trump took 74.2% in the Virgin Islands and 99.1% in the Nevada caucuses. (Haley had participated in the nonbinding Nevada primary instead, losing to “none of these candidates” by more than 30 points.)
In South Carolina, Trump defeated Haley, a recent former two-term governor, by 20 points to complete his perfect record in the early states. He did so while spending a fraction of the time Haley did on the campaign trail in the state. Trump is leading in the polls in Michigan, as well as in all subsequent states.
The national RealClearPolitics polling average has Trump leading with 77.3% to Haley’s 15.1%. Could he get close to such numbers on Super Tuesday next week?
On the other hand, the anti-Trump vote in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina has topped 40%. Haley held Trump to just below 60% in South Carolina and won 43% against him in New Hampshire.
Furthermore, the exit polls show deep discontent with Trump among Haley’s supporters and suggest a significant number of would-be Republicans would defect if the former president is once again the nominee.
Haley argues that these disaffected Republicans need representation and that the party as a whole needs a choice.
“I’m an accountant. I know 40% is not 50%,” Haley said after the South Carolina primary. “But I also know 40% is not some tiny group. There are huge numbers of voters in our Republican primaries who are saying they want an alternative.”
“In the next 10 days, another 21 states and territories will speak,” she continued. “They have the right to a real choice, not a Soviet-style election with only one candidate. And I have a duty to give them that choice.”
Trump isn’t doing nearly as well as Richard Nixon against John Ashbrook and Pete McCloskey in 1972, Ronald Reagan against Harold Stassen in 1984, or Trump himself against Bill Weld and Joe Walsh in 2020.
But Trump isn’t a true incumbent anymore, and Haley isn’t a Walsh-caliber opponent. Trump is also doing better than Gerald Ford against Reagan in 1976 and Jimmy Carter against Ted Kennedy in 1980.
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George H.W. Bush finished third in the Iowa caucuses in 1988, losing all 99 counties. Bob Dole lost the New Hampshire primary in 1996, as did George W. Bush in 2000. All were heavy front-runners who eventually won the nomination with relative ease. Trump himself lost 12 states to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) alone in 2016, with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and John Kasich also notching wins.
If Trump is judged by the standard of an incumbent, he has some work to do. If he is compared to a normal front-runner, he is doing well by historical standards. Either way, his status is unusual.
