James Johnson is co-founder of J.L.Partners. He was the Senior Opinion Research and Strategy Adviser to the prime minister 2016-2019. This is the first of a series of fortnightly columns by him about America’s forthcoming presidential election.
I learnt a new word on Friday: ‘plandemic’. Originating on social media in 2020, this is the idea that Covid-19 was consciously planned to forced people to comply to government authority.
It was also the consensus view of the attendees at a focus group of likely Republican primary voters on Friday night in New Hampshire for the US podcast Breaking Points.
Whoever the eventual Republican nominee is, Joe Biden will win through fraud, just as he did in 2020. The people around him (they feel he is too old to do it himself) will engineer another ‘plandemic’ – evidenced in recent news reports of increasing cases and the return of masks in some local settings.
He will do so to roll out more mail-in ballots come the next election and produce another rigged result. When I pushed on who was behind this, the answer was Biden’s administration – likely in cahoots with George Soros and Bill Gates. All but two of the eight-person group said that this would have at least some impact on the next election result.
Such a view was all the stranger because of the setting. Manchester, modelled after our own as a great American industrial centre in eighteenth-century New England, is an old mill town.
But the comparison with post-industrial wastelands from descriptions by JB Priestley in England, or JD Vance in the US, ends there: this is no place of boarded up shops or degrading infrastructure, but an affluent, eminently middle-class town in a state with one of the highest median income levels in the country.
Our voters were a mix of highly-educated professionals and retirees, engaged enough to vote in a primary in which only 200,000 people participate in. They were also polite, respectful, and friendly to other participants; more akin to a friendly mum at the school fete than a rabid activist. And with New Hampshire the first state to hold a formal primary in January of next year, however conspiratorial they may be, they will play an integral part in choosing the next Republican nominee for president.
Polls in New Hampshire show a closer race than nationally, with Donald Trump taking around 40 per cent of the vote, followed by Ron DeSantis on around 15 per cent, with Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Tim Scott following behind on 6-8 per cent apiece.
Trump towers over the primary. Our New Hampshire voters professed that the economy and abortion would determine their vote, but it soon became clear that it is their verdict on the personalities of the candidates – and specifically the former president – that matters most. Like a disputed deity, Trump divides Republicans into different camps.
There are the Trump True Believers. For them, Trump is essentially the incumbent nominee; they have not considered other candidates and talked about him more in terms of a future Biden match-up than in the context of the current primary.
He is “strong”, “competent”, has an “incredible record”, and in four years delivered “oil independence, secure borders, a great economy… and he gave the military a raise”. Criminal indictments only emboldened them in their support. Repeating one of the former president’s lines at rallies, Jim (a retired sales consultant) said the elites are coming after people like him – and Trump is the only one standing in their way.
There are the Trump Agnostics. They are sympathetic to Trump and like his record, but doubt his effectiveness and ability to get things done. They worry he is not the best candidate to beat Biden, that he has a weak record on Covid (“he shouldn’t have allowed the Covid stuff to be put through at all”), and question how he can repeat his success if he is in court or, worse still, behind bars.
Then there are the Trump Apostates. Two voters in our focus group fell into this category; Trump had not only lost his effectiveness but also his moral right to govern. Hardly liberal (both wanted Biden impeached), they felt that Trump had taken things too far, and that his dominance of the party was now synonymous with conspiracy theories – and essentially un-Republican ideals.
The latter two groups could, in theory, challenge the former president for the nomination. But the field of candidates is split. Mirroring the polls, Ramaswamy and DeSantis was a choice of a couple of people in the room. But other candidates are barely registering.
Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, Doug Burgum, Tim Scott, Mike Pence; already struggling to be heard through the Trump ruckus; they are cancelling each other out.
In that context, DeSantis was still the most positively received. He won plaudits from the True Believers (“very well-spoken… a fighter”), the Agnostics (“competent”) and the Apostates (“a strong executive record”).
He surpassed what other candidates faced, who were written off as ‘RINOs’ (Haley, Christie, Pence) or as unrealistic (Burgum, Ramaswamy); Scott had a unifying effect but more through a muted approval (“he would be a good vice president for Trump”) than enthusiasm.
The polls show the same of DeSantis: though he has fallen back, he tied with Ramaswamy as the winner of the first debate in the only snap poll of the night by JL Partners and the Daily Mail; other primary polls show his favourability ratings are stable, despite much of the media writing off his campaign.
To win the nomination against Trump, a candidate must win the more conservative Agnostics and the Trump-doubting Apostates.
Many have criticised DeSantis for running too right-wing a campaign, for not running an operation better-suited to the latter group (who often correlate strongly with media commentators). But walking the tightrope between the two groups is the only way to win. To do so, DeSantis has to break through with voters.
As it stands he sits as one voice amongst a fractured field. That is normal at this point in the process – but he will need to find his moment soon enough, whether on the debate stage or with a distinctive policy position
In 2016, Trump won the New Hampshire primary by surging past an array of candidates fighting over the same votes. If candidates do not rally around one opponent quickly, he is on track to repeat the same trick.
The run up to a presidential election is brutal, polarised, and often dark. But it is also energising, passionate, and the greatest political show on earth.
Having moved to America earlier this year to build out JL Partners’ US offer, I will be in a ringside seat for that show ahead of the next election in November 2024. I look forward to sharing the insights from that view with ConservativeHome readers. Who knows, we may well learn more new words like ‘plandemic’ along the way.
Watch the focus groups here.
James Johnson is co-founder of J.L.Partners. He was the Senior Opinion Research and Strategy Adviser to the prime minister 2016-2019. This is the first of a series of fortnightly columns by him about America’s forthcoming presidential election.
I learnt a new word on Friday: ‘plandemic’. Originating on social media in 2020, this is the idea that Covid-19 was consciously planned to forced people to comply to government authority.
It was also the consensus view of the attendees at a focus group of likely Republican primary voters on Friday night in New Hampshire for the US podcast Breaking Points.
Whoever the eventual Republican nominee is, Joe Biden will win through fraud, just as he did in 2020. The people around him (they feel he is too old to do it himself) will engineer another ‘plandemic’ – evidenced in recent news reports of increasing cases and the return of masks in some local settings.
He will do so to roll out more mail-in ballots come the next election and produce another rigged result. When I pushed on who was behind this, the answer was Biden’s administration – likely in cahoots with George Soros and Bill Gates. All but two of the eight-person group said that this would have at least some impact on the next election result.
Such a view was all the stranger because of the setting. Manchester, modelled after our own as a great American industrial centre in eighteenth-century New England, is an old mill town.
But the comparison with post-industrial wastelands from descriptions by JB Priestley in England, or JD Vance in the US, ends there: this is no place of boarded up shops or degrading infrastructure, but an affluent, eminently middle-class town in a state with one of the highest median income levels in the country.
Our voters were a mix of highly-educated professionals and retirees, engaged enough to vote in a primary in which only 200,000 people participate in. They were also polite, respectful, and friendly to other participants; more akin to a friendly mum at the school fete than a rabid activist. And with New Hampshire the first state to hold a formal primary in January of next year, however conspiratorial they may be, they will play an integral part in choosing the next Republican nominee for president.
Polls in New Hampshire show a closer race than nationally, with Donald Trump taking around 40 per cent of the vote, followed by Ron DeSantis on around 15 per cent, with Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Tim Scott following behind on 6-8 per cent apiece.
Trump towers over the primary. Our New Hampshire voters professed that the economy and abortion would determine their vote, but it soon became clear that it is their verdict on the personalities of the candidates – and specifically the former president – that matters most. Like a disputed deity, Trump divides Republicans into different camps.
There are the Trump True Believers. For them, Trump is essentially the incumbent nominee; they have not considered other candidates and talked about him more in terms of a future Biden match-up than in the context of the current primary.
He is “strong”, “competent”, has an “incredible record”, and in four years delivered “oil independence, secure borders, a great economy… and he gave the military a raise”. Criminal indictments only emboldened them in their support. Repeating one of the former president’s lines at rallies, Jim (a retired sales consultant) said the elites are coming after people like him – and Trump is the only one standing in their way.
There are the Trump Agnostics. They are sympathetic to Trump and like his record, but doubt his effectiveness and ability to get things done. They worry he is not the best candidate to beat Biden, that he has a weak record on Covid (“he shouldn’t have allowed the Covid stuff to be put through at all”), and question how he can repeat his success if he is in court or, worse still, behind bars.
Then there are the Trump Apostates. Two voters in our focus group fell into this category; Trump had not only lost his effectiveness but also his moral right to govern. Hardly liberal (both wanted Biden impeached), they felt that Trump had taken things too far, and that his dominance of the party was now synonymous with conspiracy theories – and essentially un-Republican ideals.
The latter two groups could, in theory, challenge the former president for the nomination. But the field of candidates is split. Mirroring the polls, Ramaswamy and DeSantis was a choice of a couple of people in the room. But other candidates are barely registering.
Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, Doug Burgum, Tim Scott, Mike Pence; already struggling to be heard through the Trump ruckus; they are cancelling each other out.
In that context, DeSantis was still the most positively received. He won plaudits from the True Believers (“very well-spoken… a fighter”), the Agnostics (“competent”) and the Apostates (“a strong executive record”).
He surpassed what other candidates faced, who were written off as ‘RINOs’ (Haley, Christie, Pence) or as unrealistic (Burgum, Ramaswamy); Scott had a unifying effect but more through a muted approval (“he would be a good vice president for Trump”) than enthusiasm.
The polls show the same of DeSantis: though he has fallen back, he tied with Ramaswamy as the winner of the first debate in the only snap poll of the night by JL Partners and the Daily Mail; other primary polls show his favourability ratings are stable, despite much of the media writing off his campaign.
To win the nomination against Trump, a candidate must win the more conservative Agnostics and the Trump-doubting Apostates.
Many have criticised DeSantis for running too right-wing a campaign, for not running an operation better-suited to the latter group (who often correlate strongly with media commentators). But walking the tightrope between the two groups is the only way to win. To do so, DeSantis has to break through with voters.
As it stands he sits as one voice amongst a fractured field. That is normal at this point in the process – but he will need to find his moment soon enough, whether on the debate stage or with a distinctive policy position
In 2016, Trump won the New Hampshire primary by surging past an array of candidates fighting over the same votes. If candidates do not rally around one opponent quickly, he is on track to repeat the same trick.
The run up to a presidential election is brutal, polarised, and often dark. But it is also energising, passionate, and the greatest political show on earth.
Having moved to America earlier this year to build out JL Partners’ US offer, I will be in a ringside seat for that show ahead of the next election in November 2024. I look forward to sharing the insights from that view with ConservativeHome readers. Who knows, we may well learn more new words like ‘plandemic’ along the way.
Watch the focus groups here.