A curious mix of caution, optimism as Republican delegates smell a landslide

“Six weeks ago, after Trump’s conviction, we didn’t know how the candidate would fare, how our base would respond, how the country would respond. But we saw the base consolidate and fund raising surge. We saw Trump emerge victorious in the debate as Biden collapsed. We saw Trump projecting strength after Saturday’s shooting. And now we are seeing the whole party come together in a way that it hasn’t for a decade. If trends hold, we are headed for the biggest Republican win in decades,” said a Republican delegate from Florida, who didn’t wish to be named because he said he didn’t “trust the media”.

It is but obvious that at the convention of a party, the party’s leaders and supporters will talk up their prospects. But the anticipation of a win is based on strong arguments and can be distilled to five factors — leadership, morale of the base, the prospects in swing states, fund-raising, and momentum.

For one, there is a clear contrast between leaders. If the debate showed Biden to be suffering from deep deficits due to his age, both physically and mentally, and projected him as a weak candidate, it showed Trump to be a more effective and disciplined communicator than the past even as his relationship with truth and factual accuracy remains troubled. The debate has been followed by an internal churn within Democrats, as elected officials and voters and donors ask Biden, who is adamant on staying on, to quit the race, worry about Kamala Harris’s prospects, and fear the implications of an open convention. Trump, meanwhile, with the assassination bid, has emerged as almost a heroic figure who displayed strength — the raised fist, the “fight, fight, fight” message, the bandaged ear have all added to the mythology around him.

“I like him because he is an alpha male. He showed it on Saturday. I want a man to be in charge,” said a woman delegate from Utah, the second delegate who had told HT that what they saw as Trump’s raw power was at the heart of his appeal for them. In contrast, Biden has become the object of relentless ridicule, with Arkansas governor and Trump’s former press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, comparing the bring your kid to work day with Jill Biden’s “bring your husband to work” days. In a presidential system, the projection of strength matters and Trump scores high on the metric.

But strikingly, the Republican campaign is also using the moment to portray Trump as human — as a loving grandfather and father, a man who stands for his team and friends, as a man who had God’s blessings — to reach out to potential voters. A delegate from Alabama said, “Biden has been more human than Trump. But Saturday changed that. Suddenly Trump doesn’t appear robotic but as a man with his own vulnerabilities and emotions. We like that.”

This has had a second direct implication on the morale of the base and supporters. Jasper, a software engineer in Milwaukee, who voted for Biden in 2020, plans to do so again, though reluctantly. “Many of my friends, all below 30, voted for Biden last time but may not vote at all this time. They are just apathetic now.” Biden’s approach to Gaza has alienated his progressive young and Arab-American support base; questions about his mental acuity have made it challenging for even Democratic activists to ask for votes for him for the next four years; and the party remains torn about the path forward. In contrast, the mood at the Republican convention is joyous and energetic. The party is unified under Trump, with even erstwhile rivals and critics rallying around, as witnessed by Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis’s speeches on Tuesday.

The third metric to assess the contest is fund-raising. Biden had a clear edge over Trump till earlier this year in terms of money, but the Republican nominee has comfortably edged past and is looking at the most resources a candidate will ever have historically in an American election. A Financial Times analysis on Wednesday showed that Trump had raised $400 million between May and June, “a record second-quarter haul that almost matches the sums raised during his entire 2016 campaign”.

This was propelled by a surge in small donors contributing to the campaign on the day of his conviction in the New York business fraud/campaign finance violation case, a sign of how strongly Trump’s narrative of victimhood has seeped down. As Silicon Valley and Wall Street bosses begin gravitating towards Trump, this fund-raising momentum is only expected to grow. Elon Musk, according to a report in Wall Street Journal, has decided to donate $45 million every month to the campaign till the election, taking the contribution to a staggering $180 million if he follows through. On the other side, Biden’s donors are dropping out with the New York Times reporting that a set of donors had frozen $90 million of their contributions till the President remained on top of the ticket.

The unified party and fund-raising surge helped Trump with his fourth advantage. American elections are essentially about contests in six states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada — for the rest of the states are considered solidly blue or red and have had a relatively stable voting record in one direction or the other. As Reince Priebus, the former chair of the Republican National Committee who ran Trump’s 2016 campaign and is now the chair of the host committee of the 2024 convention, said, “We don’t have national elections. Think of this as six sophisticated state elections, six governor races. Candidates receive billions of dollars that they invest in swing states.” Explaining how this allows parties to narrow down on each voter, get a sense of their likes and dislikes, run targeted campaigns to persuade them, Priebus said that the current dynamic favoured Trump strongly.

Even as polls show Trump enjoying a lead in these six states, and the best case scenario for Democrats appears to be winning Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, Republicans have now got more ambitious and believe they have a chance in altering the map itself and winning over blue states where margins are relatively less. On Tuesday, Trump’s top pollster, Tony Fabrizio claimed that Minnesota, Virginia, New Jersey and New Mexico were all in play now. Irrespective of whether this is campaign bluster or not, when one side is eyeing states where they had little or no prospects, and the other side is even struggling to hold on to even states considered their strongholds, it is a clear sign of where the momentum is.

Put it together and the Republican hopes of a landslide may not be entirely misplaced or illogical. Whether the Democratic National Convention, scheduled for mid August in Chicago, can change the morale of the party’s base, generate funds, rally swing voters in swing states, and determine how to move forward on the question of leadership and reorient its campaign accordingly will be the next chapter in America’s gruelling, high stakes and fluid 2024 electoral landscape.