This isn’t a “throw in the towel” kind of poll, but in some ways, it is.
The state of Florida just re-elected Ron DeSantis to a second term in Tallahassee by a whopping 20 points over former governor Charlie Crist. The state loves his leadership and loves his fight at the state level.
What Sunshine State Republicans love more, however, is Donald Trump at the national level if this new poll from Florida Atlantic University is to be believed:
The study from the Florida Atlantic University Mainstreet PolCom Lab shows that if the GOP presidential primary were held today, DeSantis would receive 30.2 percent of the vote from Floridians, far above most of his rival candidates. However, Trump has 50.3 percent of statewide primary voters, just above a 20 percent lead over the only candidate anywhere close to him.
For further perspective, the poll also asked participants who they would support if all candidates but Trump and DeSantis were taken out of the primary. In that scenario, DeSantis polled at 37 percent, but Trump maintained a decisive lead of 54 percent with 8 percent undecided.
That’s around +20 for Trump whether it’s head-to-head with DeSantis or if the field is splintered between nearly a dozen other names. Ouch.
Sure, it’s just one poll and polls are squishy and sometimes embarrassingly wrong. We all learned, myself included, to avoid putting too much stock in polls after the 2022 midterms where numbers predicting a vast red wave were, well, vastly overblown.
There’s no denying, however, that seeing Trump besting DeSantis by double-digits in his home state has to be somewhat demoralizing for Team Ron. This isn’t meant to be in a gloating sense but more an examination into why no candidate, but DeSantis in particular, seems to be able to erode Trump’s backing even by a few points.
Some commentator recently pointed out, forgive me for forgetting who, that DeSantis needs roughly half of Trump’s support to make a run at it. Meanwhile, Trump needs none of DeSantis’ support to maintain his forty to fifty-point hold on the party. In other words, Trump barely needs to try right now and he’s still winning by several miles. DeSantis, on the other hand, needs to land every punch and make every step count, something he’s, so far, failed to do.
When asked recently in an interview with Maria Bartiromo why he’s had such a difficult time, DeSantis said it’s the media working against him purely out of fear:
GOV. DESANTIS: Maria, these are narratives. The media does not want me to be the nominee. I think that’s very clear. Why? Because they know I’ll beat Biden but even more importantly, they know that I will actually deliver on all these things. We will stop the invasion at the border. We will take on the drug cartels. We will curtail the administrative state. We will get spending under control. We will do all the things that they don’t want to see done and so they are going to continue doing the type of narrative. I can tell you we understand that this is a state-by-state process.
That’s possible, I suppose. The media has enjoyed bashing DeSantis almost as much or more than they enjoy bashing Donald Trump. DeSantis is the shiny new toy in the room whereas they’ve been beating up on Trump since he rode down the golden escalator in 2015.
To counter that point, Republicans love running against the media since the left-wing bias is so inherent and blatant. DeSantis is a master of press conferences and shutting down reporters pushing false narratives. It seems unlikely that articles from The New York Times or The Washington Post are denting DeSantis’ chances, conservatives scoff at those liberal publications.
It may turn out in the end that Trump’s support is simply too insurmountable and his grip simply too strong to whittle away, regardless of who’s challenging him.
If DeSantis can’t carry his home state in the 2024 GOP primary, good luck playing on the rest of the map.
