There are two problems facing any Republican choosing to run against Donald Trump for the 2024 presidential nomination for their party. First, Trump has a strong base of support that will be hard to budge. Second, everyone else already has a clear understanding of who Trump is and what he stands for — the sort of recognition that will make it much harder for his opponents to redefine him.
That wasn’t the case in 2016. Then, Republicans were skeptical of Trump when he announced his candidacy, only to be won over as the guy they probably saw mostly as a TV businessman who embraced and echoed the right-wing rhetoric they heard in conservative media — and from which other Republican candidates shied away. A lot of Republican voters were repelled by Trump’s rhetoric, but enough weren’t that he got to be president.
New polling from YouGov, shared first with The Washington Post, shows that effect at work when Republicans (and Republican-leaning independents) were asked to contrast Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a potential candidate. On most personal traits and policy issues, Republicans prefer Trump by a healthy margin — certainly in large part because they know him better.
They know who Trump is and, generally, are comfortable with him. DeSantis is less well-known — and facing the prospect of being defined in part by the spaghetti-at-the-wall things Trump says about him.
The two candidates are viewed fairly similarly. About 70 percent of Republicans say they like Trump at least somewhat, with 64 percent saying the same of DeSantis. But about a tenth of Republicans indicate they don’t know enough about DeSantis to have an opinion. If we consider only those who have formed an opinion, the two Republicans are viewed about the same.
Asked to pick between the two candidates on a number of personality descriptors, Trump often has a slight edge. The margin of error in the poll is about six percentage points, so the difference between the candidates is often negligible or not noteworthy. But sometimes — such as on charisma, decisiveness or perceived patriotism — the difference is stark.
Interestingly, very few people said that neither candidate exhibits the indicated characteristic. In other words, there aren’t a lot of Republicans who view neither candidate as acceptable. The one exception is “willingness to compromise,” in which about a fifth of Republicans say neither candidate has that characteristic. Of course, that’s not necessarily viewed as a trait Republican voters are seeking out.
It’s worth noting that in a question asking Republicans their vote choice between Trump or DeSantis, Trump has an 18-point lead, better than in other recent polls. It’s also worth noting that, also in keeping with other recent polls, DeSantis fares better with Republican-leaning independents than with members of the party itself. We can compare the results of the questions above when the pool of respondents is Republicans or Republicans and independent-leaners.
On average, the results when independents are included are about four percentage points friendlier to DeSantis, on net.
Asked which candidate would do a better job addressing certain issues, Trump’s advantage is more robust. In part because he’s better known and in part because he’s done the job before, Trump gets significantly better marks on nearly everything. One exception is education, where DeSantis’s state-level authority — and aggressive efforts to make news — works to his benefit.
It’s worth noting, though, that DeSantis doesn’t fare better on the issue that defined his reelection bid: handling the coronavirus pandemic.
One way in which candidates will try to undercut Trump is not by attacking him personally but instead by attacking his success rate. Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley pointedly noted that Trump kept losing/helping lose winnable races; in January, DeSantis did something similar. But in YouGov’s poll, Republicans are only slightly more likely to think DeSantis would beat Biden than to think that Trump would (77 percent to 71 percent). Among Republicans and leaners, the gap is slightly wider, in DeSantis’s favor.
Both Republicans and Republicans-plus-leaners, though, think that Trump is likely to prevail in the primary, a question that in the past has proved to be an effective predictor of outcomes. Both groups are also more likely to say they want Trump to run in 2024 (which he is) than to say the same of DeSantis (which he almost certainly will be).
Perhaps the worst news for DeSantis in the poll, though, comes from one of the last questions: a plurality of Republicans thinks it’s fair for Trump to criticize DeSantis. That’s true when you include leaners, too.
Such “criticism” — to put it mildly — is well underway. According to this poll, about 1 in 9 Republicans are waiting to learn more about DeSantis and may be swayed by the former president’s rhetoric.
Only 1 in 100 haven’t made up their minds about Trump.