On the surface, former President Donald Trump appears to have a growing lock on the 2024 GOP primary based on national polls.
But some political analysts and allies of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) believe his pull in delegate-rich states could expose a possible vulnerability for the former president if the governor can go the distance.
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“I would say that DeSantis is definitely doing better in some of the states where that matters the most. So it's easy to forget that the primaries aren't about who gets the most votes. They're about getting the most delegates,” Logan Phillips, analyst and founder of RacetotheWH, told the Washington Examiner. “Trump is a uniquely strong, early primary candidate, but DeSantis is a heck of a lot stronger than the second place candidate almost ever is at this stage too.”
The state polls have given varied results and still overall show Trump leading DeSantis. But the governor is often competitive or winning in some surveys of populous states like California and Florida.
Florida has a monster 125 delegates and California has 169 out of the total 2,467 up for grabs in the cycle. Both are winner-take-all contests. Right there, those two states account for nearly a quarter of the 1,234 delegates needed to clinch the party nod.
One key caveat in many polls showing a strong performance from DeSantis is that he tends to fare stronger against Trump one on one than he does in a crowded field. For instance, a pair of Public Opinion Strategies polls released late last month showed DeSantis topping Trump 45% to 37% in Iowa while tying with him in New Hampshire. When other contenders were added, the pair tied in Iowa, and Trump led DeSantis in New Hampshire by about 12 percentage points.
“It's going to be a crowded field. President Trump's gonna walk away with it,” Alex Bruesewitz, co-founder of Trump-aligned political consulting firm X Strategies, told the Washington Examiner. “Trump is the clear favorite to win. The people want him back. They know that he's the only president and only candidate that can deliver peace … and nobody's paying any [attention] to these fake polls that are being pushed in these random states such as California.”
Bruesewitz dismissed those polls as harboring biases toward DeSantis and emphasized that even via a state-by-state metric, Trump reigns king. He cited a trove of counterexamples, such as a recent poll out of Florida showing Trump leading DeSantis by almost 15 points.
Privately, DeSantis is reportedly optimistic that the field will clear out and that he can consolidate GOP opposition to the former president. His allies have also underscored that he’s not even in the race yet. DeSantis is expected to make his intentions known at some point after the Florida state legislature session concludes in May.
Another key factor is momentum. If Trump wins in the early states, DeSantis's leads in Florida and California could be gone by the time of those primaries. If DeSantis does well early, that would provide a needed boost headed into the bigger delegate-rich states.
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“Gov. Ron DeSantis is not even in the race, and he is already the most formidable candidate. Why? Because if Gov. DeSantis decides to join the race, voters will have a candidate who never backs down from the tough fights or from what he believes in,” Erin Perrine, communications director at Never Back Down, a political action committee seeking to lay the groundwork for a DeSantis run, told the Washington Examiner.
Two factors that often loom in primary elections are momentum and room for growth. DeSantis tends to draw high favorability ratings in GOP polling. Phillips believes DeSantis probably has more room for growth than Trump, especially if the field shrinks.
“I think Trump grows if he's able to knock out DeSantis. Philips said. “I'm not sure before the primary gets going, how much stronger he'll be because I think there's a fair amount of Republicans that might like him quite a bit, but they have really serious concerns about electability. … It's also a lot easier for a candidate that's going around 30% to gain more support than it is for a candidate that's polling around 52[%].”
If the field doesn’t consolidate by Super Tuesday, Philips believes DeSantis’s chances are likely to dim dramatically due to the high delegate count, particularly in Texas and California.
Many observers have noted that DeSantis remains somewhat untested in the national arena despite his GOP star power. Dust-ups over DeSantis’s position on the war in Ukraine and his aversion to taking on Trump directly have raised questions about his durability.
“I've never seen a collapse of this magnitude," Bruesewitz said. “He's a paper tiger, and that's being exposed. The GOP establishment thought he was their boy wonder that they could use a tool to take down the MAGA movement, but they're realizing that’s so wrong and they're desperate now.”
One of DeSantis’s quiet priorities heading into the state legislative session is to scrap Florida’s resign to run law and shoring up his conservative portfolio.
DeSantis has maintained a brisk travel itinerary, stopping in a bevy of states such as Iowa, Michigan, New York, and more, with a speech in New Hampshire slated for this week along with others on the horizon.
“There have been multiple conversations about delegates and how they are picked in various states across the country,” a DeSantis adviser told NBC. “One thing that we have looked at is that Trump can be beat on the delegate portion of all this. He has never been good at that.”
Trump's team has needled DeSantis for waging a "stealth campaign" and blasted him for gypping the Florida taxpayer.
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At the moment, Trump appears to have momentum at his side. His lead nationally in a hypothetical primary has been rocketed by his recent indictment. He touts a 26.7 percentage point lead over DeSantis, according to the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate.
Still, Trump’s allies aren't taking the DeSantis threat lightly. Trump, a known rhetorical brawler, has unleashed a torrent of attacks upon DeSantis. His campaign recently cut an attack ad against him and reportedly has moved to lure donors away from him on the fundraising circuit, keen on not underestimating his top-polling GOP foe.