DeSantis-Trump primary matchup not as close as media suggests

We have very interesting dynamics developing in the 2024 Republican primary. And the big zoom-out story is that in four recent polls, Donald Trump has either taken or extended a lead that he already had against Ron DeSantis, who is his closest challenger. This happened during the month of February and there’s a lot of interesting things to talk about here. So let’s let’s first start with the media counter-narrative. 

There are many in the media who want you to think the Republican primary is very competitive and very close. And the truth is, it’s not nearly as competitive and not nearly as close as some media outlets are telling you. It’s obviously better for ratings for it to be a really close and hotly-contested primary. The truth is, unless something changes, Trump will easily be the Republican nominee. Now, let’s look at some caveats. 

One caveat is that the polls Trump does best in are the ones where there are a whole bunch of candidates — Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, all these other people, and Trump does better in those. When it’s just Trump versus DeSantis, DeSantis does better and in some cases actually is ahead of Trump in some polls. What this suggests is that Trump’s support is relatively stable, and that there’s a bunch of republican voters who want someone other than Trump. And so it’s better for Trump for that non-Trump support to be divided up amongst a whole bunch of candidates, rather than consolidated behind one candidate, who seems to be Ron DeSantis. 

The difficulty with that for Trump is that eventually, as the primary gets going, people who are only pulling 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 percent and don’t win any primaries, will start to drop out. And the data today suggest that that 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 percent will consolidate around DeSantis. That’s a concern for Trump, but it’s very, very early. 

Secondly, you can make the case that it’s actually incredible the amount of support DeSantis has, given that he hasn’t actually announced that he’s running yet. And it can only go up from here. If DeSantis is getting 30 or 40% without even being a candidate, just imagine what will happen if he becomes a candidate. That isn’t untrue. But, when you talk to Trump supporters, there aren’t that many who would switch to DeSantis from Trump, if DeSantis ran. There is the opposite. There are people who say, ‘I’m kind of done with Trump. I’d rather DeSantis, but I will vote for Trump if DeSantis doesn’t run or if it seems like he’s not viable.’ So that could be a difficulty for DeSantis. 

And then the other thing about DeSantis is, he is horribly uncharismatic. I mean, truly uncharismatic. He’s not a dumb guy. well educated and you know, the whole thing. He’s able to discuss policy pretty substantively when he wants to, although it’s not clear Republicans really care about that anymore. But he is horribly uncharismatic. And early on, he has tried to resist getting down to Trump’s level. He’s not coming up with nicknames; he’s not doing that sort of thing. He’s sort of trying to take the high road. I don’t think that that’s going to work against Donald Trump. 

There are some Republicans, people like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, who don’t like the way the Republican Party has accepted MAGA-ism, and they’re not into the whole thing. They want something different. But a lot of them are already not supporting Trump. And so what you need to think about is, are there current Trump supporters, people who to this day support Trump, who are potentially going to switch to DeSantis if DeSantis chooses not to play in the mud and take the high road? I don’t think so. 

So DeSantis is going to have to figure out when, how, and in what ways does he attack Trump? Because if he doesn’t, that guy has absolutely no chance. So we’re going to continue watching the polling. We’re going to continue keeping an eye on, does the trend of Trump doing better when it’s him versus a whole bunch of people continue? Because that’s not a particularly good sign for Trump. And then, what happens when it comes to other candidates announcing? At this early stage, a lot of the support is very soft. If right now in a poll, you show up as supporting Mike Pence, and we don’t have a clue in hell whether Mike Pence is actually going to run, that support in the polling behind Pence is what we would consider very, very soft. And that’s something we’re going to have to pay attention to closely and see how that evolves over time. 

So this primary is going to get going really, really quickly, much more quickly than you might imagine. Before you know it, we’ll be having…talking about debates at minimum and getting close to those first primaries, which will be early next year. We’re basically under a year from the official start of this primary. It’s going to be a hell of a ride. If I had to bet today, health issues aside, I believe Trump is the nominee but something could change.