Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News anchor, delivered a monologue on the X platform after former President Donald Trump’s significant victory in the Iowa caucuses last week. With the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, Carlson suggested that the rest of the country should follow the same method of conducting elections as the Hawkeye State.
“At some point, it will be interesting to discover why a certain type of person fears Donald Trump to the point of hysteria. An awful lot is going on, more than we publicly acknowledge. What would happen if we held an election the way that Americans used to do it just a few years ago? We should try that sometime,” Carlson said.
“Here’s how it would work. Everyone would vote on the same day, in person. You would show up and present an ID, just like you do at the airport or the liquor store. You do it manually; there would be no electronic voting machines,” Carlson added. “There would be no drop boxes or absentee ballots. The poll workers would probably be people that you recognize from your ZIP code. They’d be your neighbors. They would not be employees of Mark Zuckerberg from California.”
Individuals would be able to “choose” the names on the ballot, Carlson went on, adding, “Judges wouldn’t be allowed to tell you who you can vote for and who you can’t vote for. You’d get to decide.”
“And then, once you’ve voted, nobody could order a stop to the vote counting. That would be illegal,” Carlson explained. “So, you would know the results of the election in just a few hours, and you would feel pretty confident that they were pretty real. That’s how we used to do it in this country. What would happen if we tried it again?”
Later, Carlson noted that such a “retro”-feeling election led to a landslide victory by the former president.
“Trump won the Iowa caucus by more than 30 points, which is more than double the previous record… Last night was not close. It was a shocking blowout. Trump did to Iowa what the Vikings once did to the Irish coast. Only smoldering huts remained. Chris Wallace looked like he was going to be sick,” he quipped.
“Donald Trump won decisively. At this point, it’s hard to see how he’s not the Republican nominee. He didn’t just win last night. He triumphed overwhelmingly, by a historic margin,” Carlson said, though he did speculate how Trump could eventually be stopped—and not in a legitimate way.
“Nikki Haley can only become the Republican nominee if primary voters have no one else to vote for. The plan works like this: DeSantis is out. He simply runs out of money and has to head back to Florida,” he said.
“At that point, liberal donors swing as a bloc to Nikki Haley, giving her bottomless resources. That is already happening right now. And then, critically, Donald Trump goes to jail. That could happen, too, to be honest. At that point, bam, Nikki Haley wins the Republican nomination by default,” he said.
Trump, who may wind up sealing the 2024 GOP presidential nomination with a win in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, is in good shape to win the state.
Recent CNN polling out of the University of New Hampshire suggests that Trump has a commanding lead in the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary, building on his decisive 30-point victory in last week’s Iowa caucuses.
Among Granite Staters who are likely to vote in the Republican primary, Trump has 50% support, with former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley trailing in second place with 39%.
Since the last CNN/UNH poll in early January, when Trump had 39% of the vote and Haley had 32%, both candidates have gained support due to the reduction in the number of major contenders.
According to UNH polling on the race, both Trump and Haley now have their highest level of support. Despite Haley’s gains since the end of last summer, the gap between her and Trump has widened to double digits once again.
Among the early primary states, Trump’s opponents have long seen New Hampshire as their best bet to derail his pursuit of a third consecutive Republican presidential nomination.
In the Republican primary, Haley has 71% support from moderates and 58% from undeclared voters (New Hampshire’s word for independents) who intend to cast a ballot. Voters with bachelor’s degrees are more likely to support Haley than Trump (38% vs. 50%).
However, when considered separately, these demographics only account for a small fraction of New Hampshire’s likely GOP primary voters: 47% are undeclared, 33% have a bachelor’s degree or above, and approximately 30% consider themselves moderates.
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The more powerful opposing factions within each of those groups have largely rallied behind Trump. He has the support of 67% of Republican registration, 71% of conservatives, and 55% of the non-degreed population.
Even more striking is the fact that 88% of Trump’s supporters are dead set on supporting him, while only 74% of Haley’s supporters are in a comparable state of mind. That works out to 45% of voters strongly supporting Trump, compared to 30% who are on the fence about Haley.
About one-fifth of likely Republican primary voters overall still haven’t decided who to vote for, even though Tuesday’s primary is just around the corner. Currently, 51% of that group is on Haley’s side, 28% are on Trump’s, and 14% are on DeSantis.
New Hampshire Republican primary voters generally believe that Trump will win on Tuesday (70% believe he will carry the day, compared to 36% of Haley supporters).
