Two weeks ago, Ramesh argued — compellingly — that Ron DeSantis could not and should not rely on an electability argument to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination against Donald Trump. Ramesh noted Trump has defied such predictions before, and that so far, the difference in the hypothetical head-to-head matchups with Biden isn’t all that big.
In fact, polling may suggest that Trump is more likely to beat Biden. In the RealClearPolitics average, Trump is currently ahead of Biden by 1.4 percentage points, and DeSantis is ahead by six-tenths of one percentage point. State polling may be a different matter, but right now, it isn’t glaringly obvious that DeSantis is a more competitive general-election candidate. (This may change as voters get more familiar with DeSantis.)
I’d also note that today’s national Monmouth poll offers one more complication: Republican voters don’t believe that DeSantis is more electable: “Nearly half (45 percent) of Republican voters – including those who lean toward the GOP – say Trump is definitely the strongest candidate to beat President Joe Biden in 2024, and another 18 percent think he is probably the strongest candidate. Just one-third of GOP voters say another Republican would definitely (13 percent) or probably (19 percent) be a stronger candidate than Trump.”
Is DeSantis more electable? It’s easy to talk oneself into that position. Trump topped out at 51.2 percent in Florida in the 2020 election; DeSantis won 59.4 percent in his gubernatorial reelection bid last year. The pro-DeSantis independent SuperPac Never Back Down is building an “on-the-ground organizing operation that intends to hire more than 2,600 field organizers by Labor Day.” DeSantis is younger and could more easily handle a marathon campaign schedule. DeSantis doesn’t go on distracting tirades on social media and shoot himself in the foot with a runaway mouth. Trump is pure nitro fuel for Democratic get-out-the-vote operations; DeSantis is a fresher face and less of a known quantity — although Democrats will no doubt attempt to paint DeSantis as “even more dangerous than Trump” if the Florida governor wins the nomination.
The argument about which candidate is more likely to win the general election is an important one, but it deals with hypotheticals; we can’t explore different alternate universes to see if Ted Cruz could have beaten Hillary Clinton in 2016, or whether Bernie Sanders would have lost to Trump in 2020. Primary voters who strongly prefer one candidate will always find ways to convince themselves that their guy is the one most likely to win a general election. (Voters rarely choose to support a candidate who they think will lose the general election.) Considering the polling numbers, Ramesh’s advice is correct — “the key argument that DeSantis has to make is that he would be a better president than Trump, at least in terms of what matters to Republican voters.”