OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
CNN has announced which of its network hosts will moderate the first of two planned 2024 Republican presidential debates, even as interest in them continues to wane and former President Donald Trump rises further in the polls while avoiding the previous events.
According to a report from TVNewswer, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will be asking the questions on Jan. 10 at a forum in Des Moines, Iowa, ahead of the nation’s first primaries.
“CNN has not announced who will moderate the network’s second GOP debate, scheduled to take place in New Hampshire on Jan. 21. CNN announced both debates last Thursday, and while the Jan. 10 will commence as planned, there have been some question marks around the New Hampshire debate,” the outlet reported.
“Tapper and Bash … co-host the network’s Sunday show, ‘State of the Union,’ and also have their own weekday programs on the network,” TVNewser added.
There have been some questions surrounding the New Hampshire debate. Saint Anselm College, for instance, was already scheduled to host the ABC News-WMUR-TV Republican primary debate on Jan. 18, and officials there said they were surprised by CNN’s announcement of another one on the campus.
We were surprised to be included on a press release by a network about a debate which we had not planned or booked,” Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm, said in a statement last week.
New Hampshire Republican Party chair Chris Ager was more blunt, telling The New York Times: “The CNN thing came out and everybody’s like, ‘What the heck?’ I’m still scratching my head. And I still haven’t been contacted by CNN at all.”
CNN responded in a statement: “We can’t speak to any miscommunication within Saint Anselm, but we are moving forward with our plans to host a debate in New Hampshire on Jan. 21.”
Despite the growing number of GOP debates, they don’t seem to be moving the need much for the remaining candidates.
A recent New York Times/Siena College polls indicated that Trump was leading in four of the six swing states; however, additional signs of Biden’s electoral danger quickly surfaced. The president’s advantage over Trump in head-to-head matches is decreasing.
In all but two of the most recent polls conducted this month by 13 different pollsters, Biden’s standing is lower than it was in their earlier surveys.
Additionally, Trump has begun to gather momentum even though polls indicate that the majority of the movement is coming from voters who are switching from Biden to Trump, even though they may still remain undecided.
Now, more than at any other time in the previous year, Trump has a larger vote share, according to the average national poll.
The data at the state level is equally impressive. Apart from the polls conducted by the New York Times and Siena over the past seven days, additional surveys have indicated that Trump is leading by 8 points in Arizona and 5 points in Michigan.
A number of factors, including the emergence of independent and third-party candidates who have the potential to deflect votes from both Biden and Trump, the onset of war in the Middle East, and Biden’s recent decline and political predicament approximately 11 months before Election Day, indicate that Biden is losing ground to both Trump and dependable Democratic constituencies.
Meanwhile, the results of a late November NBC News poll were startling: Trump led Biden 46 percent to 42 percent of voters under the age of 35.
While that was well within the wide margin of error for such a small subgroup, other polls indicate a tight race with a Democratic constituency that has historically been dependable.
In surveys conducted this month by Quinnipiac University (Biden +9), Fox News (Biden +7), and Morning Consult (Biden +2), Biden’s leads among voters aged 18 to 34 were all in the single digits. (Trump prevailed over Biden in all four voter surveys.)
