Phil writes:
Megyn Kelly, in a recent conversation with Dave Rubin, made the case that nobody, not even DeSantis, stands a chance against Trump. Her argument essentially boiled down to the fact that Trump has too large a base of loyal followers to be beaten in a Republican primary. If she’s proven correct, I imagine that part of the answer will be in the numbers discussed above.
Megyn may well be right. And, as a Floridian, I may well be unable to see clearly where Republican voters sit on the DeSantis vs. Trump question. Nevertheless, the people we assume are going to win the next primary are rarely the people who actually do win the next primary, and, since 2016, Trump has lost an election. DeSantis is going to win reelection in November, and, if he does so by a considerable margin, that will be a feather in his cap. Sure, at the moment, Trump is romping with rural voters. But are we supposed to believe that this tells us something key about DeSantis? Certainly, he’s never struggled with “rural voters” in Florida.
There’s also the question of the level of Trump’s support. In 2016, Trump won by consistently receiving around 30 percent of the vote, and splitting up everybody else. Would that happen in 2024? Perhaps. And perhaps not. I’m aware of my priors — I don’t want Trump to run — and I’m aware that they can play games with my reasoning. But, that notwithstanding, I’m not sure how impressive it is that, in 2022, Donald Trump is winning 47 percent of the vote in polls, while the governor of Florida is winning 28. Who, one must ask, has more room to grow here? The guy we know literally everything about, or the guy most people have never seen speak? Primary elections are the stories of surges and falls. We haven’t seen any of those yet — and, when we do, they may not follow the same pattern as they did last time.