Trump vs. DeSantis: The State of Play
I’ve expressed the concern several times over the past few weeks that, by waiting to announce his candidacy until after Florida’s 2023 legislative session ends, Ron DeSantis runs the chance of missing his window of opportunity to become the 2024 GOP nominee for the presidency. Such concerns were especially high 2-3 weeks ago, as former President Donald Trump enjoyed a big bump in the various polls after being indicted by Stalinist Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg.
That polling bump was inevitable.
On the other hand, it was always going to be a temporary phenomenon thanks to the public’s increasingly brief attention span and Trump’s amazing propensity to commit a seemingly endless procession of unforced errors.
Yesterday, we saw this result released by the Yahoo/YouGov poll:
Here, we see Trump’s nominal polling lead dropping from 58-31 a month ago to 52-36 now. While that’s still a 16-point lead, it’s a far cry from 27 points and shows DeSantis trending back up again despite the fact he has yet to declare his candidacy for the job.
Here’s what else is inevitable in all of this: DeSantis is going to get a significant bump of his own whenever he does decide to declare. At that point, the gap in this poll will most likely drop to within the margin of error, or within a few points of it, and the race will be back at the starting line.
In the meantime, Trump and his bumbling group of acolytes and hangers-on will have daily opportunities at committing more unforced errors. As I’ve pointed out many times here since January, a lot of those errors consist of them trying to curry favor with supposedly “conservative” GOP voters by assuming the positions and tactics of leftwing Democrats.