How, exactly, are we supposed to view Donald Trump's candidacy?
He's not an incumbent, since he's not currently president. But he is certainly incumbent adjacent — people know what kind of president he was and he enjoys near-universal name recognition. He could be the first person since Grover Cleveland to lose the White House and then come back for a redo four years later.
Viewed as a non-incumbent, Trump is performing historically well in the Republican presidential primary. He has won every primary and caucus so far except for one, in Washington, DC and there's no reason to believe he will lose any states on Super Tuesday.
It is a far better primary record so far than every non-incumbent Republican presidential candidate in the modern primary era. But, as discussed, Trump isn't entirely non-incumbent. His margins in primary contests are worse than incumbent presidential candidates of the modern primary era, including when he was an actual incumbent in 2020.
His only remaining rival, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley continues to win a not insubstantial portion of the vote – 20% to 30% — in some states. In Vermont, obviously not a hotbed of support for Trump, the former president has only a slim lead over Haley as early returns rolled in. There are places in Virginia and North Carolina, around cities and college campuses, where Haley is actually beating Trump in early returns. It doesn't mean his position as frontrunner is in danger. It does suggest there is a kernel of the GOP that will continue to resist him.
A major question of the coming general election campaign will be what happens to those anti-Trump Republican voters in November? If Joe Biden were losing that much of the Democratic vote to his two rivals, Rep. Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson, it's safe to assume the angst among Democrats about his candidacy would become much more pronounced. Biden faced scrutiny after "uncommitted" got a little more than 13% of the primary vote in Michigan, part of an organized protest to his policy on Israel.
