The Elephants in the Room: How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leadership in 2024
September 28, 2025
Class Description
The 2024 nomination of Donald Trump was both very predictable and historically very weird — no one has lost the White House and then later been re-nominated by their party since 1892. This talk details surveys and interviews I did with hundreds of local Republican Party leaders across the country in 2023 and 2024. What I learned was that many, even most, local party leaders were really uncomfortable with nominating Trump again, even though many liked his first term. They were worried he couldn’t be elected, while there were plenty of qualified alternatives ready to run. But unlike in the past, the party’s “leaders” had no ability to lead the party; a new populist wing of voters — committed to stopping immigration and ignoring whatever party leaders say — had taken over the party, and they could not be organized around or dissuaded from their love of Trump.
About Seth Masket
Seth Masket is a professor of political science at the University of Denver, specializing in American parties and campaigns. He has written several books on U.S. political parties, including a recent book about the Democrats from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss to the 2020 nomination of Joe Biden, and a forthcoming book about the 2024 nomination of Donald Trump. He writes occasionally for Politico, the L.A. Times, NBC.com, and other publications, and maintains the popular Substack newsletter “Tusk.”