I wrote for Politico today on how DeSantis needs to return to some of the sources of his success in Florida. Realistically, though, this is a different environment, in two particularly challenging ways.
One, DeSantis is getting stomped from above by Trump and his supporters, at the same time other candidates are sniping at him from below. This makes him a universal target, which isn’t true of anyone else.
Two, as 2016 showed, you can over-think “lanes,” a DeSantis coalition would presumably have to include a chunk of MAGA voters and a large proportion of non-MAGA voters.
The new Monmouth poll (Trump 54, DeSantis 22, everyone else 5 or below) illustrates this nicely:
Half of Republican voters identify as a supporter of the MAGA movement (31% strongly and 21% somewhat). Trump commands the backing of 3 in 4 strong MAGA supporters and about half of those who support MAGA somewhat. In a head-to-head race, DeSantis (47%) has more backing than Trump (39%) among the 4 in 10 Republicans who do not support MAGA. However, the Florida governor loses about half of his non-MAGA vote share to others when the race involves a multi-candidate field.
While Trump gets that 74 percent among strong MAGA backers, the DeSantis strength is among the somewhat MAGA backers (32 percent, with Trump at 42 with this group), and then he’s at 19 percent with non-MAGA voters and 15 percent among strong MAGA backers.
Now, if DeSantis made himself more appealing overall, he’d gain with all groups, but the campaign is clearly geared at winning a critical mass of MAGA voters and then, by virtue of being the only alternative to Trump, winning non-MAGA voters, as well. This is not a crazy theory, but as the DeSantis comments on RFK Jr. yesterday show, the things he might say or do to try to get those MAGA voters could prove toxic to the non-MAGA element of the party.
This means DeSantis is subject to a double squeeze, both in terms of the competitive dynamic with the other campaigns and ideologically in terms of the coalition he’s trying to put together.