Trump Leads GOP Race For President, In Polls, Money – And Delegates

ANALYSIS – There’s one reason former President Donald Trump didn’t participate in the first 2024 GOP primary debate in Milwaukee.

He remains far ahead of his nearest rivals in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, both in the polls and in campaign donations.

Of course, he also wanted to avoid being attacked or questioned by his Republican rivals, especially about his numerous federal and state indictments.

But when you are the former president and are this far ahead, going on a friendly interview with Tucker Carlson instead of the debate seems like a very good move. (RELATED: Did Trump’s Tucker Carlson Interview On ‘X’ Really Get Over 200 Million Views?)

While it will take a few days to see if the debates, or Trump’s interview, moved the needle at all, right now, Trump continues to dominate the Republican primary field in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

In the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, Trump is 40 points clear of his nearest rival, Ron DeSantis.

Trump also dominates campaign donations which rely heavily on emails of emotional appeals, having amassed over $72 million for his war chest in just eight months.

But, while those two important metrics get a lot of attention, Trump is also already ahead in the area that’s the real key to victory: the delegate process. (RELATED: Trump Is Right To Reject RNC’s Unpatriotic Demand – But He Needs To Go Further)

As CNN reported:

Trump’s team has the lead in both its understanding of the delegate process and the steps the team has taken to tilt the scales in their favor, according to over a dozen Republican state party officials, veteran strategists and campaign operatives interviewed by CNN. Those interviews, alongside ones done with the allies of Flordia Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Trump campaign officials focused on delegate math, respectively, paint a clear portrait of the state of play of a crucial part of the 2024 Republican primary.

And this tedious process is essential to clinching the GOP nomination.

CNN continues:

Understanding the delegate count on a state-by-state level is a wonky but necessary part of winning the presidential nomination, especially in primaries that drag on for months. Delegates – awarded to candidates after the primary or caucus takes place in each state – officially nominate a candidate at the party convention, and the candidate with the most delegates will be the party nominee.

At the moment, that candidate appears to be Trump. CNN explains:

In 2016, the idea that Donald Trump would eventually have deep roots with state Republican party officials seemed outlandish. But throughout his presidency, he won over or molded certain state party leadership to be more sympathetic to him. There are also structural advantages that Trump’s team now enjoys that DeSantis’s team and allies do not.

“At the time, obviously, many state parties were skeptical of the president. They were skeptical of his conservative bona fides, they were skeptical of an ability to win a general election and sure enough, after he became the nominee, and to the seven years since, he’s done nothing but develop incredibly strong relationships with the state parties,” a Trump adviser told CNN.

While Trump complained loudly in 2016 that the GOP delegate process was ‘rigged’ against him, it may be that the processs is now ‘rigged’ in his favor.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk. It first appeared in American Liberty News.