donald trumpformer president of the United States, who lost the 2020 election against Joe Biden, is back with the Republican party as a presidential candidate. At this point, the US election has just begun, and with it comes the internal elections of each party to elect a representative before the presidential election. What are the chances that Donald Trump will once again be his party’s representative in the November 2024 presidential election with nine other opponents?

There are four major players in the Republican primaries: Donald Trump, the governor Ron DeSantis; Trump’s former vice president Mike Pence; and the former governor of South Carolina and former United Nations ambassador under the Trump administration, Nikki Haley.

Trump’s biggest opponent is De Santis, who is seen by many in the party as a calmer Trump.

Good or bad, the most important thing is that he is talked about

In Fivethirtyeight polls, the controversial Trump appears to be leading the primary, with 54.7% support. He is followed by DeSantis at 21.5%, Pence at 5.3% and Haley at 4.3%. While favored by his own party, those same polls suggest that the 54.5% opinion they hold of the former Republican president is unfavorable.

If Donald Trump manages to make it to the primary, he could be a weak opponent against the Democratic representative as he maintains a deeply unpopular profile outside of his own party.

allegations and lawsuits

One situation that continues to evolve and could affect voters is the various lawsuits Trump faces. He has two civil suits, one for sexual harassment for which he has already been found responsible, and another for fraud involving his Trump Organization company and his three oldest children. He is the first president in the United States to be charged with criminal conduct.

So far he has been charged in two different cases. In first court in New York, he has 34 felonies, for paying a bribe to Stormy Daniels with whom he allegedly had an affair, and then covering those costs with his company to make them disappear. The second case for which he has 37 serious criminal charges is being carried out by the Justice Department for possession of classified documents in his Florida residence after leaving the US presidency. In this case, they also accuse him of hiding government documents when asked to return them.

Two criminal cases are believed to be pending, one in Georgia for trying to change the vote so that he would be crowned the winner in the election he lost to Biden, and the second by the Justice Department as instigator of the violence of the attack on the US capital on January 6, and how he tried to interfere with the recognition of Joe Biden as president that same day. These cases are still under investigation for now, so Trump has not been charged.

I support in spite of everything

Currently, the allegations against Trump have had little impact on the change of mind among Republican Party supporters. A CBS poll after his second indictment came out showed that 61% of potential voters would still vote for him. This figure comes from a very loyal fan base of his, aligned with the narrative he has created that these prosecutions are political prosecutions. After his first impeachment, 8 in 10 Republicans called it a “witch hunt.”

Another advantage Trump has in the primaries is that he has multiple opponents. The base that votes for the former president is very large and that vote will not go to any other candidate. So the people who sympathize with the Republicans, but have no intention of voting for him, look for other alternatives, and when they get eight options, they split the vote, giving Trump a greater advantage.

While Trump retains many advantages within the party at this point, many other variables need to be combined that could shift voter favor in the coming months to determine the winner of the primaries, but if he won them, he would would have to overcome many obstacles before he can be president again from January 2025.