Political candidates for public office like tell potential donors and voters to dismiss any and all public opinion polls that show their respective campaign faltering or outright being decimated by his or her opponent (s), this appears to be the case with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign against former President Donald Trump.
After several campaign reboots, Team DeSantis has been pushing the narrative that the 2024 Republican presidential primary race was solely against President Trump, arguing that the contest was a two-man race and that the rest of the field was entrenched in “a scrum for third.”
Gov.DeSantis, whose campaign appears to have seen a flash of a rebound, has ramped up his attacks against Trump but has now opened several offensive fronts against former Ambassador Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and against a state lawmaker from Florida who flipped his support for DeSantis to Trump.
According to all the latest public opinion polls conducted on the race, DeSantis continues to hemorrhage support and is now tied with Ambassador Haley in Iowa.
As veteran reporter Marc Caputo of The Messenger stated, Haley has tied DeSantis in the latest “gold standard” Iowa poll conducted by The Des Moines Register.
This poll is very telling and not good news for DeSantis, who has all but bet the house on Iowa and has been traversing the state and almost completing his goal of visiting every single county in the Buckeye State.
Since August, Trump has risen a point while DeSantis has dropped 4 percentage points, and Ambassador Haley has jumped up 10 points and tied the popular governor from Florida.
DeSantis and Haley are tied at 16 points in Iowa.
In the latest polls conducted in South Carolina and New Hampshire, Haley is outpacing DeSantis by about 4 percentage points.
Ouch.
But while it looks like doom and gloom for DeSantis as Trump launches his expected Iowa campaign with eight visits to the state in about a month or so, coming second place in Iowa or winning “Iowa Silver,” could benefit DeSantis in the long run for the Republican presidential nomination.
Political Mailer Confirms DeSantis Poses Real Threat to Trump in Iowa.
If DeSantis can mitigate the damage Trump will inflict on his campaign and come in a distant, but respectable second place, DeSantis could garner enough support to bridge the gap between him and Trump in South Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, going into Super Tuesday.
DeSantis is getting crushed by Trump by over 30 points in all the early-voting states, so when we suggest he needs to come in a “respectable” second place, we mean that he can’t lose in any of the states by 20 or more percentage points.
If he does lose by an astronomical voter margin, DeSantis’s goose will be cooked, and the Fat Lady in Lakeland, Florida, or wherever she calls home, will soon be tuning up her vocal cords.
The latest RealClearPolitics.com national average of polls gives Trump a seemingly commanding and insurmountable 46.5% lead over DeSantis.
With all of that said, Trump road to the White House is not a brisk walk in the park rather a road paved with political land mines, indictments, betrayals, and self-inflicted wounds.
All of Trump’s apparent missteps and indictment do not seem to matter much with voters who are coming out in droves to support Trump over the continued “witchhunt” being perpetrated by overzealous state and federal prosecutors hell bent on taking Trump down.
That is the narrative Trump, his team, and MAGA Republican are pushing, and it is working.
To add insult to injury, Trump is also winning the ugly online "influencer" war. Top Trump influencers like Laura Loomer, Alex Brueswitz, Catturd, Roger Stone, and others, have just about owned their DeSantis counterparts.
In looking at the head-to-head matchups between Trump and Biden and DeSantis and Biden, the former President appears to have the advantage as the majority of the polls taken in October 2023 show that Trump is either tied with Biden, or beating him.
DeSantis for the most part is losing to Biden, but if he does find a way to win the Republican nomination, he will surely outpace Biden considering the the adverse affects that “Bidenomics” has caused, and the ongoing struggles the administration is enduring on the foreign policy front.
