Democrats would prefer the Republican nomination be to
Florida Gov. Florida Governor Rachel Mummey, Washington Post via Getty Images
Which would Democrats prefer to see as the GOP’s 2024 presidential candidate — Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis,
Yes, I do know that the Democratic voters won’t have much say here1 and they can’t make the Republican electorate vote in a certain manner. It’s too early to speculate on who will win the Republican presidential primaries, let alone the general election. DeSantis is not even officially in the race. However, early polls should not be ignored, as we have written before.
A series of polls by The Economist/YouGov in late last year asked Americans which candidate they wanted to be the Republican nominee for 2024. DeSantis was slightly more likely than Trump, especially when the respondents were only given two choices.5 ThirtyEight’s average polling of hypothetical, imperfect, head-to-head matches of each man against President Biden shows that DeSantis has a slightly better chance.
What gives? Are Democrats willing to see their party face a harder fight next year?
The slight preference of Democrats for DeSantis over Trump, even though DeSantis may currently be better positioned than Biden, could be due to one simple fact: Democrats don’t want any more dealings with the former president and might not be thinking in terms who’s easier to beat.
Hans Noel, a Georgetown University professor of government, stated that while most Democrats would be afraid of Trump’s presidency, they would also be worried about DeSantis’ presidency. He said that DeSantis might be a lot like Trump, but “more competent” or something. “I don’t know if this is the right interpretation, however it’s one that many Democrats have.”
However, it is not a good idea to jump to conclusions about the preferred challenger of Democrats based on polls conducted months ago. Let’s not forget that this isn’t about Democrats liking DeSantis better or knowing more about him. A YouGov survey from February showed that Democrats have a slightly favorable (28%) and unfavorable (67%) opinion of Trump (25% favorable, 60% unfavorable). This suggests that many Democrats are still not sure about the Florida governor. In fact, 15% of Democrats did not have a opinion on DeSantis, while only 4% had an opinion on Trump. Similar results can be seen in other polls. It is possible that Democrats’ preferences are still squishy at the moment and will continue to change as they learn more about DeSantis’s presidential campaign.
It’s easy to see why Democrats might prefer DeSantis to be the GOP nominee in a head-tohead matchup, especially at this stage of the 2024 campaign.
One, it is possible that Democrats don’t know about his (current) formidability in facing Biden and view DeSantis more easily than Trump, who scared them in 2016 with that “impossible win.” Noel also said that DeSantis could be viewed as a welcome alternative to Trump, especially to voters who believe that Trump is “uniquely antidemocratic or uniquely a danger to American democracy.”
DeSantis could be preferred by Democrats at this stage if they really dislike Trump. Democrats could quickly turn their back on DeSantis as he draws more attention in the national spotlight and especially if DeSantis acts like Trump during primary (as I predicted).
“DeSantis is a more mainstream politician. You might not expect him tampering with norms or encouraging violence. We’ll have to wait and see how things turn out as we learn more about him,” Noel said to me. “To win the primary, he will need to outflank Trump in some of the culture-war issues that his MAGA constituency is interested in. However, the more he appeals to these voters, the greater chance he will alienate Democrats.
It is unclear whether Democrats will change their mind as the primary progresses, especially if they see Trump as a weaker general election candidate (although he was also perceived that way in 2016 and we all know what happened). There are plenty of reasons to believe that this might be true. Trump-led Republicans have already suffered three poor elections in rapid succession. They lost the House in 2018. They lost the presidency in 2020 and the Senate in 2020. They lost the Senate and the presidency in 2020. However, they did not win the House by a narrow margin.
A growing number of Republicans blamed him for the party’s failures in the last year’s midterms. Trump-backed candidates were defeated across America, while DeSantis won reelection and flipped a historically Democratic county. There are many reasons to believe that DeSantis, or another Republican candidate, would be a more difficult challenge for Biden than Trump.
It is possible that Democrats don’t want to see the 2020 election redone. The Economist/YouGov polls from last year showed that less than half of Democrats wanted Biden to run again for president in 2024. However, recent polling suggests that they believe their party is more likely to retain the White House if he is the nominee. This is consistent with other reports and surveys that show that, while Democrats are ready to move on from Biden in some respects, there isn’t consensus on who they want running in his place. This complicates how we view the early preference of Democrats for DeSantis rather than Trump as their party’s opponent. Democrats who want Biden as their party’s nominee in 2024 might prefer a different opponent than Democrats who want Biden to run.
The Republican primary will not be between Trump or DeSantis, but it will include many other candidates. Nikki Haley is already running for the race, the former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador. In at least two The Economist/YouGov polls that offered more options than Trump and DeSantis (including Haley and Ted Cruz in Texas, and former Vice President Mike Pence among others), no Republican candidate received more than 15% support from Democrats. In fact, 38 percent of Democrats (in both polls) said they weren’t sure.
All this is to say that public opinion regarding this subject is not solid. As more Republicans enter this race, Democrats will likely develop their opinions about their preferred opponent. At the moment, however, it seems like Democrats are just trying to keep the former president out of the way.
Footnotes
Unless they are citizens of an open-primary country and wish to vote in the Republican primary in their state. It’s unlikely that many Democrats will take advantage.
One poll we looked at gave respondents a longer list of Republican candidates to choose. While Democrats preferred Trump over DeSantis by 5 percentage points (and they did so by 5 percentage points), they preferred Mike Pence and “someone else”, rather than DeSantis. 38 percent of Democrats, however, said they weren’t certain who they preferred.
Based on polls conducted between Nov. 11, 2022 and March 13, 2023.
Alex Samuels is a FiveThirtyEight politics reporter. @AlexSamuelsx5
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