Trump holds ‘commanding lead’ in latest poll of GOP primary voters
NEWS AND OPINION:
Year-end surveys continue to be released by the nation’s ever-vigilant pollsters. One has some promising news for former President Donald Trump.
“Trump holds a commanding lead in the GOP primary,” declared Rasmussen Reports, offering some new numbers in a brief report released Tuesday.
“With just weeks to go before Republican primary voters begin choosing their 2024 presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump has a wide lead over his rivals for the GOP nomination,” the pollster said in a brief written report.
The national telephone and online survey found that 51% of likely Republican primary voters would vote for Mr. Trump if the primary were held today, while former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley would get 13%, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie each get 9% of the vote. Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy has 1% support.
A sizable 16% are undecided, the poll found.
The survey of 792 likely Republican primary voters was conducted Dec. 19-21.
THE HALEY FACTOR
The nation is only days away from the dawn of 2024 — a presidential election year that has already sparked much speculation about Republican contenders. A CBS News report that aired Dec. 22, for example, suggested that former President Donald Trump has been “asking allies and advisers for their thoughts about Nikki Haley as a potential vice presidential candidate.”
Politico, on the other hand, reported this on the same day:
“Donald Trump’s allies, MAGA media influencers and even his son are sending the Republican frontrunner a message as he begins to ponder potential vice president picks: Don’t even think about choosing Nikki Haley.”
Mrs. Haley is now at the center of press speculation — and conflicting opinions plus a little confusion as well. A few headlines from the last 72 hours offer insight:
“Trump has spent months attacking Nikki Haley. Now he’s mulling her for VP” (The Independent); “Trump’s MAGA allies strongly urge him not to choose Nikki Haley for VP” (Business Insider); “Trump allies and MAGA luminaries move to kill off the Haley-for-VP buzz” (Politico); “Nikki Haley can beat Trump by touting her superior plan to fix Americans’ health care” (The Tennessean); “Newly flush with cash, Nikki Haley makes her move in Iowa. is it too late?” (Yahoo News); and “Nikki Haley closes to within four percentage points of Trump in surprise New Hampshire poll” (Fox News).
A REALITY CHECK
“When it comes to immigration, conservatives want the current law enforced before we talk about reforming the system. That means raising the bar for asylum claims to weed out applicants who are gaming the system, ending mass release of illegal crossers at the border, and limiting President Biden’s rampant abuse of immigration parole,” wrote Simon Hankinson, a former foreign service officer with the State Department and currently a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center.
“Virtually nothing new or informative is being stated in this article. Yes, we know that enforcing existing laws would shut the problem down nearly immediately, but we also know no one in the Biden administration nor the Democrat Party, as a whole, is interested in doing that,” Mr. Hankinson said in a commentary about the situation.
“They are busy importing millions upon millions of fresh, poorly educated or completely illiterate people into the country to ensure they have enough voting numbers to win every major election going forward in perpetuity. By election day 2024, the total of illegal aliens residing in this country should top 50 million. With 10 million of that number being imported just under the first four years of the Biden administration,” Mr. Hankinson writes in The Daily Signal, an online news site published by The Heritage Foundation.
THE FIRE HOSE ROBOT
It’s not Godzilla, but this could come in handy.
“Imagine a flying dragon that doesn’t spout fire, but instead extinguishes it with blasts of water. Thanks to a team of Japanese researchers, this new kind of beast may soon be recruited to firefighter teams around the world, to help put out fires that are too dangerous for their human teammates to approach,” said a news release from Frontiers in Robotics and AI, a science journal.
“The blueprint of this novel firefighter robot, called the Dragon Firefighter, has now been published in Frontiers in Robotics and AI. And as it has been published as Open Science, roboticists around the world may freely use the plans to build their own Dragon Firefighters, for the benefit of all,” the release said.
It was published Friday by Eurekalert.org, a news site maintained by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
“We here present a prototype of a four-meter-long, remotely controllable flying firehose robot, engineered to safely and efficiently extinguish fires in buildings by directly approaching the fire sources,” said joint corresponding author Yuichi Ambe, an assistant professor at Osaka University, in a written statement.
Others are exploring the same ideas, apparently.
“A research team from Prof. Satoshi Tadokoro’s laboratory at Tohoku University began working on similar flying robots in 2016. Since then, 11 researchers and students have contributed to its further development. Prior and during development, they liaised with Japanese firefighters to better understand their needs,” the news release said.
POLL DU JOUR
• 45% of U.S. adults say the current condition of the U.S. economy is “poor”; 67% of Republicans, 48% of independents and 22% of Democrats agree.
• 33% overall say the U.S. economy is “only fair”; 28% of Republicans, 30% of independents and 41% of Democrats agree.
• 19% overall say the U.S. economy is “good”; 5% of Republicans, 18% of independents and 33% of Democrats agree.
• 3% overall say the U.S. economy is now “excellent”; 0% of Republicans, 4% of independents and 5% of Democrats agree.
SOURCE: A Gallup Poll of 1,013 U.S. adults conducted by telephone Dec. 1-20.
• Follow Jennifer Harper on X @HarperBulletin, on Facebook @HarperUniverse.
