This one data point is getting a lot of play online, and understandably so (Madeline covered it a little while ago, briefly). Whenever there's any indication that anyone might have any shot at beating Donald Trump in a 2024 GOP primary -- including straw poll results at conventions, for crying out loud -- people take notice and hype it. My reaction is that this is interesting, sure, but people might want to tap the breaks a bit. First, the top line:
New UNH survey of "like NH GOP primary voters" for 2024 (n=318):
— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) June 22, 2022
DeSantis 39%
Trump 37%
Pence 9%
Haley 6%
Pompeo 1%
Noem 1%
Cruz 1%
Last October:
Trump 43%
DeSantis 18%
Haley 6%
Pence 4%
Cruz 2%
Noem 1% https://t.co/fbIQInjs8k
Let's start with why this is intriguing. (1) As far I as I can recall, this is the first time a state-level poll has shown Trump even in the ballpark of tied with someone else, aside from a February Florida survey showing Gov. Ron DeSantis statistically tied with Trump in his home state (where Trump is also a resident). Florida is a state that matters in the nominating process. So is...New Hampshire. (2) Check out the trajectory from October 2021. Trump is down a bit, but DeSantis has shot up to the head of the class. The more GOP voters are seeing from Florida's governor, the more they're liking what they see. (3) Check out some of these cross-tabs:
Statewide favorable/unfavorable numbers with all voters:
— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) June 22, 2022
DeSantis 36/45%
Trump 33/59%
Biden 26/56%
Harris 23/64%
No one's favorables are good, but of these four people, DeSantis is "best" at (-9). Vice President Harris is dead last at (-41). And at least in this snapshot moment, DeSantis is more competitive against an unpopular Biden (leading by one point) than Trump would be (down seven, roughly the same as his 2020 margin of defeat in the Granite State). This all seems to align with a growing sentiment being detected among the GOP base, as encapsulated by this quote from a recent Associated Press story:
Despite the audience cheers, many of those attending the conference voiced skepticism about a third Trump run. “I don’t know. The jury’s still out with me,” said Jonathan Goodwin, a minister who works as a Faith and Freedom organizer in South Carolina. “I like him, but I think he shot himself in the foot too many times”... Goodwin said he “definitely” had his own concerns about the 2020 election but didn’t support how Trump had handled the situation. “I think he should have bowed out gracefully,” he said, “whether it was rigged or not. Illinois conservative Pam Roehl, who arrived at the conference Friday wearing a red Trump baseball cap and “Trump 2020” necklace, said she still supports the former president, but increasingly finds herself in the minority among friends who have moved on, discarding their bumper stickers and embracing DeSantis. “They’re like kind of: ’Get with the program. Why aren’t you backing DeSantis?’” she said.
It's not terribly surprising that Team Trump is said to be nervous about DeSantis, with the former president choosing to participate in the New Yorker's new, negative piece about the Florida governor, expressing confidence that he'd beat DeSantis in a 2024 showdown. Trumpworld is said to loathe DeSantis, seeding attacks against him in whisper campaigns -- but they're supposedly concerned enough about the threat he poses that they're considering moving up Trump's 2024 launch announcement to this summer, months before the midterms. The idea, it seems, is to try to freeze out the field, discourage others from getting in, then jump out to a dominant fundraising lead, while sucking up all the oxygen. A former president who's truly self-assured that he's a runaway frontrunner wouldn't feel the need to consider these maneuvers, let alone execute them. We'll see how things play out. But while some of these developments must be heartening to those who want to see DeSantis take the plunge (including, reportedly, his wife), there are reasons for pause here, too:
(1) It's mid-2022. All of this is insanely early, and there will be a million news cycles between now and whenever the presidential race actually heats up. DeSantis probably can't be dismissed as a flavor of the month (this is a good insight, in my view), given the extent to which he's already been tested and attacked on a national scale, but running for president is a different ballgame. He's been a fairly uniting figure on the Right for the last few years. What happens when the incoming fire arrives from within the tent? How does he react, adjust, etc? We don't know yet. (2) An over-performance in his Florida re-election bid would bolster his case; an under-performance would hinder it. A loss (highly unlikely, I'd say but Trump-connected people are trying to circulate that possibility) would effectively crush it. (3) This is one poll -- two, if you count the Sunshine State survey from four months ago. It has a very small sample size. Putting too much stock into it would be silly. (4) Trump hasn't really taken a swing at DeSantis yet, and vice versa. If both men ultimately enter the fray, that quasi-detente would end, probably explosively. It's hard to predict what the fallout would look like. In 2016, Trump was very effective at exploiting opponent's weaknesses and maintaining the Alpha position. His all-consuming dominance within the party is not as strong as it once was (see: Georgia), but a lot of that strength and influence endure. These numbers don't mean very much until we see how a guy like DeSantis would react -- and how the red electorate would respond -- once Trump goes to war with him.
Parting thought: If I were Trump, I wouldn't try to freeze out the field early. The more, the merrier, in fact. Trump's hardcore base is larger than anyone else's (he's still got a yawning lead nationally, and the largest group of core supporters), so the more crowded the primary, the more beneficial that would be for the person with the biggest slice of the pie. Maybe the not-Trump folks would consolidate and the game would shift. But maybe that would never happen, or start to happen hopelessly belatedly, as it did in 2016 -- in which case, advantage: Trump. And then there's this, getting wayyyy ahead of ourselves. If Trump were to somehow lose in the primary process, is there any reason to believe he'd accept that outcome and endorse the person who beat him? If he refuses to do both, in a sharply-divided country, that could be enough to hand an election to the Democrats (2021 Georgia as a preview):
And if the DeSantis people have also factored this scenario in and still think he can pull it off, well, we’ll see if you prove me wrong when your guys really plays in a playground bigger than Florida. I’m open to being proven wrong
— Asawin Suebsaeng (@swin24) June 22, 2022
Join the conversation as a VIP Member