(Trends Wide) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has spent the past few months moving to the right ahead of his expected entry into the 2024 Republican presidential primary campaign. From enacting a law banning abortion for six weeks to fighting Disney, the governor has focused on satisfying his party’s conservative base.
At least so far, those efforts have not paid off in the Republican primary polls, with DeSantis falling even further behind current frontrunner, former President Donald Trump.
Things have gotten so bad for DeSantis that a recent Fox News poll shows him at 21%, comparable to the 19% that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has pushed debunked conspiracy theories about vaccine safety, receives. on the Democratic side.
DeSantis was at 28% in the February Fox poll, 15 points behind Trump. The Florida governor’s support has declined in the two Fox polls released since then, and he is now 32 points behind the former president.
early polling issues
The Fox poll isn’t the only one showing DeSantis floundering. The latest national polling average shows her falling from the low 30s to the low 20s.
This may not sound like a big deal, but early polls have long been an indicator of how well presidential candidates fare in the following year’s primaries. Of all primary elections since 1972 with no incumbent candidates, candidates in about 30% in early primary polls (as DeSantis was in February) became their parties’ nominees about 40% of the time. Candidates who showed up in the polls like DeSantis now won about 20% of the time.
I will of course point out that 20% is nothing. DeSantis certainly still has a chance to win. The Kennedy comparison is not a comment on Kennedy’s strength but on DeSantis’s weakness.
There is no historical example of a sitting president like current President Joe Biden (over 60% in the latest Fox poll) losing a primary. At this point in 1995, Bill Clinton was in the polls where Biden is now, and he had no trouble winning the Democratic nomination the following year.
In that same campaign, Jesse Jackson was getting close to 20% in several early anti-Clinton polls. So what we’re seeing from Kennedy now is not, as yet, a historical anomaly.
Jackson didn’t run in that 1996 race. The starting power is strong enough to deter most hopefuls.
The last three sitting presidents to lose state primaries (while on the ballot) or drop out—Lyndon Johnson in 1968, Gerald Ford in 1976, and Jimmy Carter in 1980—had less than 40% of the vote or more. less than 10 points right now in the primary poll.
The good news for DeSantis is that he doesn’t need to beat a sitting president, although one could argue that Trump is in the polls as such.
In fact, DeSantis’s decline is due, at least in part, to the rise of Trump. The former president, who was indicted on felony charges in New York, has gone from low in his mid-40s to over 50% in the 2024 median poll. (Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges.)
DeSantis’ mistakes
But it could also be argued that DeSantis isn’t helping their cause. He has yet to formally announce his 2024 campaign: Most of the previous nominees had already done so or filed with the Federal Election Commission at this point in the race. And the governor’s play to the right does not align with the position of the anti-Trump forces within the Republican Party.
Trump has consistently been the underdog among the party’s moderates. A Quinnipiac University poll released in late March found that he polled 61% among very conservative Republicans, while he polled just 30% of moderate and liberal Republicans.
This moderate wing is the part of the party least likely to want to ban abortion after six weeks. A KFF poll conducted late last year showed moderate and liberal Republicans split 50/50 on whether they wanted a six-week abortion ban.
This group is not small. Moderates and liberals made up about 30% of likely Republican primary voters in the Quinnipiac poll.
In fact, DeSantis’ other big front-page action — his fight with Disney — also managed to split the Republican Party, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found last week. Although a clear majority sided with the governor (64%), 36% of Republicans do not.
For reference, more than 80% of Republicans said in a Fox poll last month that Trump had done nothing illegal regarding the criminal charges against him in New York.
DeSantis, at the moment, is not building a base. He is dividing the Republicans and allowing Trump to claim a cloak of electability. The general electorate continues to oppose the six-week abortion ban and his position on Disney.
We’ll see if that changes should his poll ranking improve after the official launch of the campaign. If not, this may end up being one of the dullest presidential primary seasons of the modern era, given the significant leads for Biden and Trump.
