Whit Ayres on 2024: How Weak is Trump? What about Biden?

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2024

⏱️ 59 minutes

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Summary

Summing up the state of the 2024 race as we head toward the South Carolina primaries, veteran Republican pollster Whit Ayres says if the election were held today “Trump would win … in the Electoral College.” Yet despite Trump’s quasi-incumbency, 40-45% of the Republican primary electorate have voted for other candidates to date. According to Ayres, Trump suffers from some major weaknesses as a candidate, which leave an opening for Nikki Haley—and portend problems for Trump in a general election. But Biden may be even weaker. As Ayres puts it, “the vast majority of Americans, including a vast majority of Democrats, think Biden is just too old to serve effectively…and virtually no one in either party thinks Kamala Harris is ready for prime time.” Despite the appearance of stability in the race—the increasing likelihood of a 2020 rematch—Ayres notes that a full 2/3 of Americans are unhappy with the choice between Biden and Trump. Kristol and Ayres consider how, beneath the surface, the 2024 contest may be unstable—with the potential for domestic and geopolitical events to intervene, and third-party challenges that could upend the race.

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to Conversations. I'm very glad to be joined
0:19.1	again today by my old friend Witt Airs, the head of North Star opinion research, one of the most
0:24.8	well respected Republican but also non-political opinion polling firms in the country, and also
0:31.0	a real strategist who's been involved in many Republican campaigns from presidential,
0:36.4	governor and senator.
0:38.0	It's good time to be talking also because South Carolina Primer is coming up with and you,
0:42.0	I don't know if you were born there, but you started off in South Carolina Primer is coming up with and you I don't know if you were born there but you started off in in South Carolina you were a student there and a professor there if I'm not mistaken and a budget director there did I make that up I think it's actually taught eighth grade in Greenville in an earlier era, eighth grade
0:54.8	civics and history, the toughest job I ever had and then I could use they could use
0:58.6	more of that civics and history and they're elsewhere right then I was on the faculty at the University of South Carolina
1:04.7	Department of Government International Studies and then I was on the
1:08.7	governor's staff under Carol Campbell as his budget and policy directors.
1:13.2	So I spent a lot of time in South Carolina.
1:15.2	And he's done races there, right?
1:17.0	Yes, yes, we have.
1:19.2	Starting with Carol Campbell.
1:20.8	Right.
1:21.2	He was a good governor. Yeah, different era.
1:23.0	David Beasley and a number of others in South Carolina over the years.
1:27.0	So we're talking on February 1st. We last spoke at the end of August after the first Republican debate I think and of course no voting get taken place.
1:36.2	We've seen Iowa, we've seen New Hampshire, we're now have a two-person race.
1:38.9	Many people thought it would take longer to get to that.
1:41.2	We have the results from Iowa, New Hampshire, we have polling from
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