Here’s Who’s Leading Among 2024 GOP Voters for the Presidential Primary

One poll is an outlier.  Two could be a possible trend.  What about a dozen or so?  Earlier in the week, I mentioned a national YouGov survey showing Republican-leaning voters now preferring Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to former President Donald Trump (way) ahead of the 2024 primaries.  DeSantis led by seven points in the poll, a 16 point swing away from Trump in the span of one month.  And what happened within that month is obvious and significant: A slew of MAGA-aligned candidates lost or underperformed in an underwhelming midterm election for Republicans, while DeSantis won a blowout of shocking and historic proportions in Florida, securing re-election by an unfathomable margin of nearly 20 points.  GOP-leaning voters seem to have noticed and internalized these developments.  There are multiple caveats to this hard movement toward DeSantis, and we’ll address a few of them below.  But first, note that we’re not just talking about that one national poll of Republicans.  There’s also this one out of Texas:

2024 TX Republican Primary Poll

DeSantis — 43%
Trump — 32%
Pence — 5%
Haley — 4%
T. Scott — 1%

Oct. 23
Trump — 46%
DeSantis — 29%
Abbot — 4%
Pence — 4%
Haley — 4%
Cruz — 3%

⦿ November 12-13, 1,099 LV
⦿ @CWS_Research / @TexasGOP https://t.co/mMmM8PjZjN

— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) November 14, 2022

That’s a dramatic inversion in a matter of weeks.  Intervening events had a massive impact, clearly.  Add the Texas numbers to previous (pre-election) polling showing DeSantis surging ahead in his home state of Florida, plus neighboring Georgia, and we’ve got an intriguing phenomenon on our hands.  And then, one day ahead of President Trump’s anticipated — and incredibly early — 2024 announcement, the conservative Club for Growth dropped these polling bombs out of the sky:

NEWS: The Club for Growth fires a warning shot at Trump on the eve of his ‘24 launch – and indicates it might back DeSantis

Club – a former staunch Trump ally – releases polling memo showing DeSantis with wide leads over Trump in IA/NH/FL/GAhttps://t.co/fbofBWrWx3

— Alex Isenstadt (@politicoalex) November 14, 2022

2024 Presidential GOP Primary

(+- vs from August 13)

IA
DeSantis — 48% (+11)
Trump — 37% (-15)

NH
DeSantis — 52% (+7)
Trump — 37% (-8)

FL
DeSantis — 56% (+7)
Trump — 30% (-12)

GA
DeSantis — 55% (+8)
Trump — 35% (-6)@WPAIntel | 11/11-13 | LV’shttps://t.co/SjR18Lhdnm

— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) November 14, 2022

The swings, compared to August data, are huge.  Based on these surveys, Florida’s governor how holds head-to-head leads against Trump of 11 points in Iowa, 15 points in New Hampshire, 26 points in Florida, and 20 points in Georgia.  Here are three more state-level polls (IA, NH, NV) with DeSantis now ahead, a national poll with DeSantis barely ahead, and another national survey with Trump leading.  It’s undeniable that quite a lot of Republican-aligned voters are at least very open to moving on from Trump, and seem to respect and prize winning.  Since his upset 2016 victory over one of the most polarizing and unlikable major party nominees in modern American politics, Republicans have steadily lost ground during the era in which the party’s brand has been widely associated with Trump.  Big 2018 losses in spite of an excellent economy (for which Trump deserves a good deal of credit, by the way), a 2020 presidential loss against a weak candidate, a disastrous Democratic sweep in the 2021 Georgia Senate runoffs (one day prior to the January 6th disgrace), and now the very tepid 2022 ‘red splash,’ under what should have been near-ideal conditions for thumping Republican gains.  These outcomes are not all exclusively about Trump, and it’s an oversimplification to suggest otherwise, but he is a common denominator, nevertheless.

Now, some of the aforementioned caveats: (1) It’s ludicrously early.  Part of the reason this is all playing out so soon is because Trump has insisted on getting into the race nearly two years before the next general election.  Next Thanksgiving (2023), he will have been running for president for an entire year-plus already, with nearly another full year to go until the general.  He risks an exhaustion/burnout factor among voters in making this decision, but it’s a risk he’s evidently willing to take.  A lot can happen in just a few weeks, as the polling above indicates.  Lord knows how things will be shaping up roughly a year from this coming January.  (2) DeSantis is obviously having a moment, and it’s well earned.  But political moments come and go.  Whether he can sustain something is an open question, as is whether he’ll take the 2024 plunge at all.  My guess is that he’s inclined to do so, but nothing is certain until it happens.  Regardless, very early polling in election cycles often end up looking very silly in retrospect.

(3) One-on-one polls are only so useful because they don’t reflect the actual choices voters will likely face.  Even if DeSantis can maintain a fairly commanding hypothetical lead over Trump over the next 12-16 months, which is a massive ‘if’, a crowded 2024 field would deprive him of the head-to-head shot he may covet against Trump.  If there are, say, a dozen people running, the pie of GOP primary support gets sliced up among a lot of names, which would benefit the person with the most loyal and consolidated slice/base of support.  That person, as of now, would be Donald Trump.  The more people enter the race, the better it is for him, which is why I think his exceptionally early entry into the 2024 fray is a strategic mistake — not just because of the burnout factor mentioned above, but because his early presence will probably freeze out or scare off a number of people who’d otherwise get in.  His uncontrollable desire to be the biggest dog, garnering the most attention as soon as possible, and announcing hyper-early as Republicans are still licking wounds from last week, doesn’t seem like the best strategy.  But maybe he’ll assert oxygen-sucking dominance right out of the gate and coast to the nomination.  We’ll see.

For now, DeSantis appears content to smartly ignore Trump’s unprovoked barbs and provocations, while focusing on the business of the people of Florida.  In case you missed it, here was DeSantis putting in a clinic on not taking the bait when asked about Trump’s comments:

Great answer. Bait not taken, Trump not mentioned, frames attacks as “noise” and criticism from the media (and vague, unnamed other sources), and broadly points to the results scoreboard. https://t.co/JgROHK9P1X

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) November 15, 2022

With Trump already in, it makes all the sense in the world for DeSantis to watch and wait as things settle a bit.  He’s in the unusual position of being both an underdog and a potential frontrunner-in-waiting, so holding off on a decision and possible announcement for months isn’t a bad play at all.  I’ll leave you with conservative columnist and newly-minted Floridian Karol Markowicz — who has been a Trump and DeSantis supporter — pushing back against my theoretical comparison of her re-elected governor to a 2016 Scott Walker redux situation (a governor who beat the Left in his state, thrilled the base, put big wins on the board, then fizzled as a presidential candidate on the national stage):

.@karol: Trump’s Attacks On DeSantis Are ‘Such A Misstep’#FoxNews #Trump #DeSantis https://t.co/7lfULaWZWd

— The Guy Benson Show (@GuyBensonShow) November 14, 2022

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