Although he has not yet officially announced his candidacy, the former president donald trump remains the favorite among Republicans to represent the party in presidential elections of 2024.
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That is something that has been becoming clear in almost all the polls and that is based on the weight that their support has in the primary elections that have been taking place in the states to define the candidates that will be on the ballot this November when the elections are held. mid-term legislative
the person who chooses Trump he is the person who generally ends up prevailing in internal elections.
But with each passing week it’s gotten stronger the candidacy of a rival who could spoil his dream of a return to the White House. This is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
At the moment, DeSantis is focused on his re-election campaign, which will also be defined in November, and has not said or suggested that he is interested in challenging the former president in the primary elections that officially start at the end of 2023. Among other things, because he stops even to have a shot at the nomination, you must first win in your own state.
Still, his name has continued to grow in all kinds of formal and informal polls. At the national level, the former president continues to command the parade with relative ease. In surveys conducted in July and August by Yougov, Morning Consult and Sienna College, Trump gets 50 to 60 percent of the Republican vote to DeSantis’s 25 to 30 percent.
Yet these same polls indicate that DeSantis’s popularity has doubled in the last six months. In other words, while the governor has been growing, the former president seems to be regressing.
In fact, in several informal polls conducted during party conventions, DeSantis has come out as the favorite. One of them in Michigan, which is a key state for the presidential contest and another in N.H.which for being among the first to vote during primary elections tends to set a trend.
A sample taken by the Daily News at the exit of a national convention of young Republicans also points in this direction. 47 percent of those under 34 years of age favor the former president while 44 percent favor the former governor.
Last week another poll of USA Today/Suffolk University He put him for the first time as the favorite in Florida with 48 percent of the intention to vote compared to 40 percent for Trump. In January, the difference was the same, but favoring the former president.
Numbers that, without a doubt, are telling.
“DeSantis is known in Florida but little nationally. That he is racking up these numbers against a former party chairman and not even saying he is interested in running speaks for itself,” says Mathew Shaddick, director of political markets in smarketa company that does this type of calculation.
That he is accumulating these numbers against a former president of the party and without even saying that he is interested in the candidacy is something that speaks for itself
According to Shaddick, the rise of DeSantis is turning into a serious challenge to the former president’s aspirations.
Many think that this is one of the reasons why Trump has been flirting with the idea of announcing his aspirations in advance, when the primaries are still a year and a half away. In other words, neutralize DeSantis before his name continues to grow within their party.
DeSantis has gradually positioned himself as an alternative for several reasons. In many of these same polls, those who prefer him to the governor underline Trump’s age as an impediment, since he would be 78 years old when his term begins in 2025.
Likewise, they are concerned about its negative image at the national level and the hatred it arouses among Democratic rivals. Something that has grown with the audiences it has been holding Congress on the violent takeover of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and his efforts to remain in power in an undemocratic manner and the investigation being carried out for his alleged “theft” of classified documents.
Something that DeSantis, who is 43 years old and has become very popular in Florida among conservative and Hispanic voters, does not drag. DeSantis was born in Jacksonville, Florida, studied law at the Harvard University and is a former veteran of the war in Iraq, where he served in 2007.
After a brief stint at the Department of Justice, he won a seat in the House of Representatives in 2012 representing this same state.
Once on Capitol Hill he established himself as one of the most conservative voices within the party, helping to found the Freedom Caucusan organization of Republican legislators that is ideologically more to the right than the so-called “establishment.”
Four years later, and with Trump sitting in the Oval Office, DeSantis became one of the former president’s main defenders during the investigation that led to the Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller on the role of Russia in the 2016 elections and the possible links between Moscow and the Republican leader’s presidential campaign.
This support was later translated into the president’s support for his candidacy for the Governor of Florida where he used his loyalty to Trump as the lynchpin of the campaign. DeSantis ended up defeating Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, his Democratic rival, in a tight race that ended in a recount where he won by just 0.4 percent of the vote.
But since then his popularity in the state has grown in part thanks to his stance against the covid-19 pandemic and his opposition to the use of masks, social distancing and the imposition of vaccines.
But also for the defense of laws that restrict abortion in the state and education on sexual orientation for minors in public schools. Positions that have brought him national recognition and have become very popular with Republican voters. In recent weeks he has gained notoriety again by sending some 50 Venezuelan immigrants to the island of Marthas Vineyard.
Although he was criticized by many, his audience was precisely the base of the Republican party that responds well to the heavy hand on the immigration issue.
His re-election, however, is not given as a fact. Before he will have to defeat Congressman Charlie Crist, the candidate who was elected by the Democrats to represent him in November.
In fact, in a recent Political Matrix/Listener Group poll, Crist ranks above the current governor. But the shift to the right of the state in recent years -Tump won it in both 2016 and 2020- suggests that the governor will end up imposing himself.
In any case, to achieve this, he will probably need the support of the former president. Which explains why he has avoided challenging Trump despite Trump’s criticism of him in recent months.
This past Sunday, an interview with the former president was circulated by a New York Times journalist in which Trump calls him “fat”, “false” and “complaining”.
More than anything, the attack is further evidence that Trump sees DeSantis as a rival danger.
DeSantis, however, has an advantage over Trump that is just simmering. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Department of Justice is advancing criminal proceedings against the former president for his role in the January 6 insurrection and possible effort to block legislative certification of the victory of the President Joe Biden.
If this gains steam, the former president’s candidacy could be further weakened and DeSantis, without saying anything, would emerge as a more viable option to defeat the Democrats in 2024.
The irony in the rise of the governor is that despite owing almost his entire political career to Trump, he is currently the most likely to defeat him.
But for that there is still a lot of fabric to cut and it will depend on several factors,
Among them the course that the nomination takes in the Democratic Party. If Biden steps aside and a new figure emerges like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, 54, Trump’s age could work against him against a younger, new-generation politician like DeSantis.
But if Biden launches, a duel between the “old guard” would favor the former president. Still, what is clear at this point is that Trump is no longer alone in the race and an opponent has emerged who could well put him on the ropes.
SERGIO GOMEZ MASERI
TIME CORRESPONDENT
WASHINGTON
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