Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's presidential campaign has announced that in the first 24 hours after officially announcing his 2024 presidential run for office, it raise a record $8.2 million in hard-dollar donations.
“This historic fundraising haul shows that grassroots Republicans across the country are uniting behind Governor DeSantis’ vision for our Great American Comeback,” campaign manager Generra Peck said. “Governor DeSantis has built the strongest, most sophisticated organization in the history of American politics, and the tremendous support we’ve experienced in the last 24 hours will be critical as we hit the ground running in the early nominating states to share Governor DeSantis’ plan to revitalize the American Spirit.”
DeSantis's launch was widely panned by the media and the Donald Trump campaign as a bust because of the first aborted Twitter Spaces event with Elon Musk, and the subsequent Twitter Space that ran about an hour long.
The official announcement video has garnered over 22 million views, and if you couple that with the cash raised, the rollout appears to be nothing less than a political coup d'etat of the Republican presidential primary for DeSantis.
But just as DeSantis's campaign is showing the expected support it would receive once he officially announced his presidential candidacy, all of the latest public opinion polls show former President Trump leading DeSantis by 30+ percentage points.
DeSantis is bump will be reflected in the next batch of polling. The question is, how much will his bump be, and will it be significant enough to show voters, media types, and politicos, that there is a chance DeSantis makes this a very tight race.
Team DeSantis is launching "Our Great American Comeback Tour" next week in Des Moines, Iowa. The kickoff will be followed up by 4 events throughout the state, and then several in New Hampshire and South Carolina
