WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is seeking a reset for his week-old presidential campaign after last week’s botched Twitter announcement and a monthslong decline in early primary polls.
But the governor may require patience as he tries to improve his numbers with his first in-person events as a candidate for the Republican nomination.
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DeSantis, who raised $8.2 million during the first 24 hours of his campaign, trails former President Donald Trump in the polls by an average of 31 percentage points, and he should expect to remain there for some time, according to Suffolk University Political Research Center Director David Paleologos.
“I mean, sure, anything’s possible,” Paleologos told the Washington Examiner. “The problem for DeSantis isn’t Trump. The problem is the other candidates because Trump has his fixed, core, loyal band of supporters who will be with Trump through thick and thin, including legal issues.”
“The problem for DeSantis is [Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC)] and former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and some of the other people who have yet to announce because they are going to be taking a disproportionate piece of the anti-Trump Republican primary vote away from him,” he said.
Paleologos predicted increasing his poll numbers will be a “slog” for DeSantis and may rely on his debate performance, targeted advertising, and “perhaps Trump, himself, self-destructing.”
“It’s going to be a slog because you can’t take a redwood down with one swipe of the ax,” he said. “Right now in the Republican primary, Trump’s a big, fat redwood tree. It’s gonna take multiple hits before he can fell the tree, so I don’t think you’re going to see any immediate, significant moves in the Republican primary polling for quite some time.”
University of Iowa politics professor Timothy Hagle advised against “putting too much emphasis” on early polls. Hagle also noted DeSantis’s numbers coincide with “a barrage of negative advertising and attacks by Democrats, Trump, and even a few other Republican candidates,” such as Haley.
“The problems with the Twitter Spaces launch — and accompanying criticism and mocking of it — didn’t help him any, either,” he said.
But for Hagle, DeSantis’s campaign starts this week, with his two days on the road in Iowa before making stops in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Despite Iowa not choosing the nominee for the last three presidential elections without an incumbent, all of the 2024 candidates perceive the state as critical if they have any hope of undermining Trump. Underscoring Iowa’s importance and the former president’s reluctance to cede any ground, particularly to DeSantis, Trump will be in the state as well on Thursday for a Fox News town hall, which will be broadcast from the same suburb of Des Moines as DeSantis’s first in-person event as a contender.
“To get a bounce and to get his campaign off to a good start, DeSantis will need to do a good job of explaining his positions and record,” Hagle said. “That includes how he does in speeches, but also how he interacts with Iowans who want to ask him about various issues.”
“Now that DeSantis has begun to actively campaign, he’ll be able to speak more directly with voters to explain and defend his record,” he added. “The media attention that follows, as well as his own advertising, should give him a bounce. The key, of course, will be whether he can sustain and build on that as the campaign progresses.”
DeSantis campaign spokesman Andrew Romeo previewed how the governor’s four-day, three-state, and 12-city tour will introduce his vision for America to the public after describing the country as being in “decline,” necessitating a “Great American Comeback” in his announcement video. The campaign announced Tuesday, too, that DeSantis would return to Iowa on Saturday for Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R-IA) annual Roast and Ride fundraiser.
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“I wish the elites in Washington, D.C., would take a page out of the Iowa playbook, but instead, they have ignored what works, and they continue to plunge this nation into the abyss,” the governor said in Clive, Iowa, on Tuesday. “These elites are not enacting an agenda to represent us. They are imposing their agenda on us via the federal government, via corporate America, and via our own education system, all for their benefit and all to our detriment.”
“My job as a leader is to put the interests and the jobs of the people I represent ahead of protecting my own political hide,” he went on. “We had some tough going politically for a while. We were getting hammered, and lo and behold, when you do the right thing, regardless of polls or regardless of wherever the wind’s blowing, people appreciate you. They know when you stood up for them when it’s not easy, and you do it. That’s when they go to war for you.”
