Republican-primary voters concerned about the trajectory of the GOP’s nominating contest in the race’s early days are being advised to wait for the debates, but Donald Trump’s critics on the right cannot be satisfied with the status quo. Trump’s advantage in national Republican-primary polling remains “historically large” and his support is well in excess of the support all his opponents generate combined, which should concern Republicans who hope for the consolidation of the anti-Trump vote behind one alternative candidate.
If you’re pulling for Ron DeSantis to emerge as the last, best Trump alternative in the field, you should be even more concerned because those voters disaffected with Trump aren’t defaulting to DeSantis. The Florida governor is not unknown to Republican voters, but his name recognition is comparable to Trump’s, and his favorability ratings sometimes eclipse Trump’s, which suggests he’s marginally better liked by Republicans than the former president. However, voters are reluctant to affirm that they will vote for the man from Tallahassee.
An analysis of the GOP electorate conducted by Republican pollster and strategist Patrick Ruffini provides some clues about how Republican-primary voters are thinking not just about this race but about their personal circumstances and the future of the country. Ruffini’s approach breaks the Republican electorate down into six camps. DeSantis owns the voters who are most enthused by his crusade against institutions that even wink in the direction of the campaign of revolutionary social justice that’s migrated out from American college campuses in the last decade. But that amounts to only about 13 percent of the GOP electorate.
To a lesser extent, Donald Trump suffers from this problem, too. The core “MAGA” voters, whom Ruffini deems “moderates” because they pair their staunch social conservatism with centrist economic policy preferences, are culturally revanchist, but they also favor a strong safety net and protectionist economic policies and are likely open to the confiscatory-taxation regime necessary to fund these proclivities. This is where the so-called nationalist Right lives. While more numerous than DeSantis’s base, they are also a minority — just 21 percent — of the Republican vote.
The Republican voters who make up the other 66 percent of the GOP are to the right of both these camps insofar as they are more conventionally conservative and, more importantly, conventionally Republican. The majority of Republican-primary voters are more likely to be male and over the age of 50. About 40 percent of them are degree-holders. And they are deeply “concerned” about the direction in which the nation is headed.
The case for Ron DeSantis isn’t hard to make, though he himself seems to struggle to make it. DeSantis brings to the table everything Republicans like about Trump without the incontinence that renders Trump himself unacceptable to a critical mass of the general electorate and weakens his ability to get things done in office. But in making this case, often implicitly, the governor has avoided the appearance of a stark contrast with Trump — at least, so far.
DeSantis has preferred to emphasize niche issues that Ruffini’s analysis suggests have narrow appeal. The goal is obvious — 50 percent plus one more Republican voter. The tactics DeSantis is applying in pursuit of it, however, limit the avenues he can take to achieve it. If wokeness is a fad among the over-educated progressive Left, Ruffini’s analysis suggests anti-wokeness is a fixation of the over-educated cultural Right. It’s not going to be enough to oust the dominant figure in Republican politics from his prohibitive perch at the top of the polls. DeSantis has to win more voters, yes, but Trump also has to lose them. So far, DeSantis’s efforts to pick this lock aren’t working.
