“Morning Joe” covered new 2024 election polling Wednesday that indicated a majority of Republican voters believe former president Donald Trump would beat sitting President Joe Biden in a reelection campaign, despite facing a historic two –going on three, potentially four — indictments.
Ex-Republican political consultant and writer Tim Miller was on hand with cohost Willie Geist to discuss the poll’s findings — and suffice to say, he wasn’t all that surprised by what he saw.
“They think that he won last time!” Miller said.
Geist introduced the segment by overviewing the new polling out of Monmouth University that showed 69% of Republican voters say Trump is the strongest candidate to go up against Biden in 2024. Meanwhile, 31% says another candidate would be stronger.
Comparing those results to polling between the current Republican candidates gunning for the ballot, the poll showed Trump with a 54% lead, compared to Florida Gov. Ron Desantis placing at 22% and the remaining candidates pulling 5% or less.
Geist said the latter polling was “not a surprise,” but “what’s interesting if you go back to the previous Monmouth screen is that the voters are not buying the argument that Donald Trump is going to lose the general election.”
“I mean, the Republican primary voters thinks, yes, he is the guy, despite everything that’s coming down on him,” Geist said. “They really aren’t so worried about the fact that he may be indicted now for a third time with perhaps another coming in Georgia before he runs for reelection here.”
Miller cheekily credited the findings to the “alternate universe reality” that many Republican voters are living in.
“These people might not be dealing with facts, but it’s a majority of the party, overwhelming majority of the party that thinks that Joe Biden’s win in 2020 was illegitimate, thinks that he is suffering such severe mental decline, that he can’t even be president, that he’d be very easy to beat,” Miller said. “They think that there’s a Deep State conspiracy targeting former President Trump. If you believe all of these things, then it would be natural for a majority 0f the party, then, to think that Donald Trump would be well placed to beat Joe Biden — because they think that he won last time!”
Miller added that those same voters widely believe that “Joe Biden is basically incapacitated, and so in that worldview, it would make no sense to try and change horses.”
“Now, those of us in the fact-based community realize that that’s not true, but that is kind of the information universe that Republican voters are swimming in if they’re reading MAGA media, listening to MAGA podcasts, watching Newsmax, watching some of these far-right media outlets,” Miller concluded.
Watch the full “Morning Joe” segment in the video above.
