Ramesh’s point in his latest Washington Post op-ed is important, and it should provide Ron DeSantis’s campaign team with valuable guidance. Florida’s governor needs to emphasize the results he will deliver for Republican voters as president over the debatable proposition that Donald Trump can’t win another national election.

But as I said on the Editors podcast on Tuesday, the governor should hold nothing in reserve in the effort to dislodge Trump from his presently prohibitive perch atop national Republican primary polls. The electability argument is one of many tools in DeSantis’s shed, and he shouldn’t decline to wield it. Republican voters might balk at the notion that Trump is presently less electable than DeSantis given national polling that suggests Joe Biden is vulnerable to both candidates. And yet, surveys at the state level tell a different story. It’s a story DeSantis should be telling, too.

A Public Opinion Strategies survey conducted in mid May of Arizona voters — a state Biden won in 2020, has a Democratic governor, and is represented by two Democrats in the U.S. Senate — finds Trump trailing Biden by two points. But that same survey also finds DeSantis handily defeating the president with 47 to 43 percent of the vote.

That same firm found that Biden narrowly leads Trump in Georgia, another state Biden carried for Democrats in 2020 for the first time since 1992. Biden enjoys the support of 44 percent of the state’s voters to Trump’s 43 percent. By contrast, DeSantis leads Biden by three points with 45 to 42 percent.

That pollster’s survey of Pennsylvania’s voters taken in mid April found Trump losing to Biden by 46 to 42 percent, whereas DeSantis defeats the incumbent president with 45 to 42 percent of the vote.

A poll of Nevada voters sponsored by the Nevada Independent in mid May showed Trump losing to the president by eight points (48 percent for Biden and just 40 percent for Trump). But DeSantis runs a more competitive race in the Silver State, with 43 percent supporting Biden and 42 percent backing DeSantis.

Back in February, Roanoke College polled Virginia voters and found that DeSantis led the president with 48 to 43 percent of the vote. Trump would, however, preserve the GOP’s losing streak in a state the party hasn’t carried in a presidential year since 2004.

The pollster WPA Intelligence found in April that the Florida governor can pull off victories in five of the country’s six most competitive presidential battleground states, as the New York Post reported at the time: “Arizona (48%-42%), Michigan (45%-43%), Nevada (44%-41%), North Carolina (44%-41%) and Pennsylvania (45%-42%).” In Wisconsin, a DeSantis–Biden contest is tied at 45 percent apiece. Moreover, that pollster has also found that DeSantis has coat-tails. He is better positioned today to help down-ballot Republicans win their races than former president Trump.

Data analysts can quibble with the validity of polling this far out from a general election and the methodology each pollster applied to get these results. But DeSantis’s camp shouldn’t! They have a ready-made favorable narrative here and shouldn’t be afraid to promote it. Yes, national general-election polling today suggests the incumbent president is vulnerable to both Trump and DeSantis, but the national popular vote and the state-level results routinely diverge and could do so again in 2024. The data we have right now suggest clearly that DeSantis is more competitive in swing states than Trump.

Ramesh is right that DeSantis cannot rely wholly on the electability argument, primarily because the evolving political landscape may rob him of that narrative in the coming months. But he should not decline to make the most of that argument now while it is entirely valid.