After weeks of will-he-won’t-he speculation, Donald Trump has confirmed that he will not attend the upcoming Republican presidential-primary “debates.” Instead of appearing on stage with the other candidates in Milwaukee on Wednesday, the former president reportedly plans to instead pre-tape an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the release of which will presumably be intended to divert Republican voters’ attention. But if the interview is released online and on-demand, it is unlikely to overshadow the first live GOP presidential debate of the 2024 cycle. And that isn’t the only advantage available to the Trump alternatives in the presidential race.
The latest Quinnipiac University survey indicates that Trump is taking a real risk by backing out of Wednesday’s debate. It finds that most GOP primary voters — 57 percent of them — say it’s “very important” for candidates that qualify for the debate to participate. Another 27 percent say it’s “somewhat important.” Just 15 percent say it’s either not especially important or not important at all. Since only one qualified candidate is avoiding Milwaukee on Wednesday, we can safely deduce that only about 15 percent of the Republican primary electorate supports Trump’s decision — at least, in a vacuum, before they are primed by pollsters to treat this question, like every other question, as a rough proxy designed to gauge their general affinity for Trump.
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