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I cannot hear Galen, but you guys are coming in fine. No, we can't really see. Yeah, your video is kind of in and out right now. Great. This is like a Twitter spaces, guys. What fun. We're having our own. Indeed. Are we going to have our hot mic like... I know. I was like... The servers are melting down, guys. When it was kicking off, I was like, oh, yeah, this is what it felt like to record a podcast during COVID. Yeah.
Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has officially entered the Twitter space. Sorry, I mean presidential race. He kicked off his campaign in a conversation on Twitter spaces with Elon Musk and tech entrepreneur
David Sachs on Wednesday. You have probably already heard that things didn't exactly go to plan. There was about 20 minutes of awkward pauses and the space crashing before they changed plans and had David Sachs host the space instead of Elon. That seemed to fix the problem and was followed by an hour long conversation about COVID, tech and speech regulations, Bitcoin and more.
In DeSantis' opening remarks, he stressed electability. Essentially, having the right platform doesn't matter if you can't win and implement it. A not-so-veiled swipe at Trump's 2020 loss. Today, in our averages, Trump leads the GOP primary polling at around 53%, with DeSantis at around 20%, although these things can change quickly in a primary environment. In fact, they already have. Just a couple months ago, Trump's lead over DeSantis was half of what it is today.
Here with me to discuss is senior elections analyst Jeffrey Skelly. Hey, Jeffrey. Hey, Galen. Happy Monday. Or it's not Monday. It's what am I even doing? It's Thursday. I still haven't. I was in such like podcast mode because we usually record these Mondays that I just was like, yeah, let me hit that normal note. And no, happy Monday.
Happy Thursday. Good news for you, though. It's better than saying happy Thursday and being closed Monday. Not only is it not Monday, we're headed into a long weekend. I'll say for the record, listeners, we're recording this podcast earlier than we usually record podcasts. To be fair, it's not that early. It's currently a quarter to 10, but it is earlier than we usually record. I am here. I am here. You are here. You are here. Also here with us is senior reporter Amelia Thompson DeVoe. Hey, Amelia. Hello. Hello.
How's it going? Are you ready for this long weekend? I am. Yeah, I'm actually, I'm off tomorrow, so I have like a matter of hours. Here we go. Happy Friday, Amelia. Yeah, happy Friday. What day is today?
It's all, I mean, the days are made up anyway, guys. Come on. Oh, that's true. Wow. Also here with us is senior election. I know. Welcome to this graduate philosophy class. No, not graduate. Undergraduate philosophy class 101. We're all freshmen. First semester of freshman year. Yeah, exactly. We're talking about how time is made up. We're freshmen. Yeah. Also with us is senior elections analyst and fellow philosophy freshman, Nathaniel Rakich. Hey, Nathaniel. Hey.
Hey Galen, happy whatever the hell day it is. All right, we're going to move right along. To kick things off, here is the video DeSantis released shortly before his Twitter Spaces announcement. Our border is a disaster. Crime infests our cities. The federal government makes it harder for families to make ends meet. And the president flounders.
But decline is a choice. Success is attainable and freedom is worth fighting for. Riding the ship requires restoring sanity to our society, normalcy to our communities, and integrity to our institutions. Truth must be our foundation and common sense can no longer be an uncommon virtue.
In Florida, we proved that it can be done. We chose facts over fear, education over indoctrination, law and order over rioting and disorder. We held the line when freedom hung in the balance. We showed that we can and must revitalize America. We need the courage to lead and the strength to win. I'm Ron DeSantis, and I'm running for president to lead our great American comeback.
Jeffrey, you wrote the kickoff piece for the website.
To ask a really broad question here at the start, what is DeSantis' plan for winning this thing? Well, it seems to me that he's, I think it was the New York Times that actually kind of summed this up, which is Mago without the mess in one of their stories. And that to me really is sort of like a defining characteristic of how he wants to present himself. Basically selling his accomplishments in Florida is evidence that he can get things done in
But also touching in the meantime, touching on particularly, I think, culture war issues that really animate the right, especially on things like education, trans issues, for example. And so sort of selling himself as a culture warrior who who has a track record of getting things done.
And has won by a lot in what at least was once a swing state, Florida. And I think contrasting that with Trump, who in the 2022 midterms, in the aftermath of that, we saw DeSantis get his best polling numbers in part because people were very focused on Trump's sort of mistakes and who he endorsed in the lead up to the 2022 midterms and how he was seen as sort of an anchor on the party.
So I think contrasting those accomplishments and pitching in sort of throwing red meat to the base, but having a, you know, having done things and also being able to win versus what Trump's record has been. And particularly, I think trying to make the case that,
Trump's a loser, maybe, would be maybe the simplest case that DeSantis would like to make as sort of his argument for voters. Yeah, I mean, the problem with that argument, though, right, is that Republican primary voters, like, aren't, like, especially looking for a winner, right? They care a lot more about, like, you know, ideological purity and, like, will this candidate fight for me? So, yeah.
There was a CNN poll a couple of months ago that asked basically, do you want a candidate who shares your position on the issues or would you prefer one who has a strong chance of beating Biden? And 59% said that they wanted a candidate who shares their positions on the issues and only 41% said they wanted the candidate who could beat Biden.
contrast this to the Democratic primary in 2019 and 2020, when, of course, everybody was obsessed with electability. And we've had kind of these like endless conversations about who was electable. And, you know, that may very well have helped Joe Biden because he was, you know, the kind of experienced, you know, white guy who could take on Trump. But at this point or at that point in March 2019, in the 20
cycle, 58% of Democrats said they wanted the candidate with a strong chance of beating Trump, and only 33% said it was more important that the candidates share their position on the issue. So this is a different landscape. I'm not sure that DeSantis' electability argument is going to land.
Well, and I think there's also an open question about how much primary voters are going to care about DeSantis having gotten things done. I mean, I think first of all, to many in the Republican base, they do look at Trump's four years in office and see some major accomplishments. I mean, he appointed three Supreme Court justices. That's something that is huge to big segments of Republican voters.
And, you know, the idea that you don't have to capture people's hearts and minds if you can get things done when you get into office, I don't know how that's going to land as a political pitch. I mean, I think it's pretty clear that DeSantis is a smart guy. He's done a lot as governor of Florida. He's done a lot of creative things to expand executive authority in Florida. He says he'd do the same thing as president.
I have no reason to doubt that he has a plan for doing that as president, but whether these kind of technical arguments that he's making and his announcement on Twitter was really technical, lots of big words, lots of talk about sort of like specific articles of the constitution,
I just don't know if that level of granularity is something that primary voters are really going to resonate with. Yeah, I'll say, Nathaniel, we talked a little bit about the electability versus issue argument on
on Monday and came to the conclusion that yes, that is certainly where Republican voters are now. Although things can change as you know, candidates rise or fall in the polls and Jeffrey pointed out that they have in the past, you know, you say you want an experienced candidate, but then all of a sudden Trump is leading in the polls and now you want a fresh outsider or something like that. So we'll have to see. But I don't think that DeSantis is making the pitch like
you may not agree with me on all the issues, but I'm electable. He's saying you agree with me on all the issues and I'm electable. Like his pitch isn't, you got to make a choice between electability and the issues, which was maybe more Biden's pitch to a democratic primary base was like, I may not be the furthest to the left. I may be more moderate, but like, Hey, I can beat Donald Trump. And that's a little bit different from what's going on here. I think. Well,
I think what's going on here, just to clarify a little bit of what I was saying, is I think DeSantis is saying, I'm going to fight for you on the same things Trump's going to fight for you, and I'm actually going to get things done. That's his pitch. He's not saying to Republicans, you're going to have to settle on ideology. What I do think he's saying is...
Like if he's saying that folks have to settle anywhere, it's on rhetoric and charisma and the kind of heart part of politics where Trump...
you know, for all the wild things he said that never got done, he really connected with voters and continues to connect with them so that they believe that he's on their side. He's fighting for them, even if he still has no border wall to show for it. And DeSantis is saying, basically, I'm going to get you that border wall built. And, um,
That is what you should care about. And I think he, you know, we'll have to see how he performs on the campaign trail. There's been a lot of talk about sort of DeSantis' awkwardness. I think it's too early to say what kind of candidate he'll be because he's just getting introduced on the national stage. But I do think it's safe to say that any Republican in this race is going to have trouble matching Trump's level of charisma simply because Trump is really,
He's just got his own thing. And so I think that is where DeSantis is trying to set himself apart and maybe expectations that a little bit that he's not going to really speak to people directly, maybe in the way that Trump does, but he knows what they care about and he's actually going to get things done. And that's what I'm genuinely unsure how primary voters are going to respond to that. So I
You know, we should talk about his rollout a little bit. You know, here at FiveThirtyEight, we understand that the theatrics of an initial announcement can play a relatively small role in how your campaign ultimately performs in primaries and caucuses that are six months away. But so there were the glitches. But also, how does his pitch for the presidency change?
jibe or contrast with what we saw on Wednesday night, like in his conversation on Twitter with Elon Musk and David Sachs? Was he showing us what he plans to do in his campaign? I think the difficulty with the announcement is that with Musk and Sachs there, I think they spent a lot of time
sort of the initial questions touched on things that might matter a bit more to Musk and Sachs. I mean, I think, you know, there were conversations that even they even touched on things like Bitcoin. And, you know, he never talked about inflation. He didn't talk much about immigration. He didn't like there were things that just were not touched on that, you know, are going to come up on the actual campaign trail. At the same time, though, he did use questions sometimes to to sort of shift the
to something that he'd done in his past, an accomplishment to sell himself. I think we'll be hearing a lot about COVID-19, it sounds like, based on the interview because there was sort of an initial talk about – I think the opening question was after all the kinks got worked out was like Twitter and free speech and how that's important. And DeSantis used that as a segue to talking about –
COVID-19 and that the liberal elites – Looking for conventional wisdom. Yeah, like the liberal elites in Washington and health people had – they had the wrong policies and they refused – they forced these things on us. But in Florida, we opened up quickly and we rejected this conventional wisdom that was wrong and our state was stronger for it. But then also I think tacking on like –
some ideology to that in terms of like freedom of freedom of speech tying into to just basically like hearing multiple sides of things and um anyway it does sound like covid is going to be something he he will talk a lot about as an accomplishment basically and knowing you know how divided and partisan that got uh when we were sort of the height of that um i kind
I could see that playing to the Republican base most certainly. So what stood out to me most in the announcement, at least thinking about the kind of campaign that he's planning to run, is what he didn't talk about. And obviously...
A campaign launch is a curated space. It's where you get to talk about what you want. You don't have to talk about the things that are tough, but we did not hear pretty much anything from DeSantis about the issue of abortion, despite the fact that he recently signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida. And we also did not hear anything about his main rival, Donald Trump.
And those are both areas that have proved difficult for DeSantis and for other candidates in the race. And, you know, we can talk about abortion first. This is an area where Republicans are having a lot of trouble coming to a consensus about the right level of abortion restrictions now that, of course, there's no more constitutional right to abortion and states and the federal government can do what they want on this. And Trump has come out saying,
you know, really not kind of just not wanting to talk about it and saying like, we got Roe overturned. That was the goal. States are doing what they want. You know, this isn't a popular issue is kind of the subtext. It was bad for Republicans in the midterm. We're just going to not touch it for a bit. And, um,
A lot of people in the Republican base are unhappy about that. Many Republican-controlled legislatures in the past few weeks have passed abortion bans of varying strictness. This is clearly going to be something that is an issue in the Republican primary. And DeSantis has been trying to walk this really weird line where he is trying to say to the anti-abortion Christian conservative side of the Republican base that
look, I'm actually better than Trump on this issue because Trump is not saying that he supports further restrictions. And look, I just signed this six-week ban in Florida. And Florida is a really key state for abortion access in the South. So this is a ban that matters a lot to people who are engaged on this issue. On the other hand,
I think he understands that a six-week abortion ban is a really serious general election liability. And it might be something that hurts him among other Republicans who think that the party's going too far on this issue. So he's also tried to say, look, I did this thing, but don't look too hard. Right.
I'm not going to talk about it too much. And so it was really interesting to hear that among his list of accomplishments, when he was talking about all the many things he did in Florida, the abortion ban was not prominent among those. And then, of course, we've talked about this. All of Trump's rivals are having trouble figuring out a way to attack him. And the fact that DeSantis alluded to Trump many times, the
They could have called him like he who must not be named because it was like clear when they were talking about him. But they didn't use his name and they didn't he didn't go after him directly. And that's something that Trump's rivals are going to have to sort out, because if none of them are attacking Trump directly, and especially if, you know, like the people who are perceived as the real threats to Trump, like DeSantis are not attacking him directly. That's good for Trump.
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As I mentioned at the top, primary polling can move quickly, and particularly because it's a primary, everyone who's voting is already Republican. And so a lot of these candidates may seem appealing to folks. And if you do look at the polling, you see that two thirds of Republicans say that they would feel good about a DeSantis nomination.
you know, similarly or more say they would feel good about a Trump nomination. So these things can move quickly. And like I said, they already have. So at one point late in 2022, DeSantis was actually leading Trump on average in head-to-head polling. And, you know, even just a couple months ago, right when we launched our polling averages, the gap between the two was only 15 points. Now it's more than 30. How do we understand that gap?
development, because during that time, I mean, we've moved further away from the 2022 midterms, but the news in any conventional sense hasn't been great for Trump, right? There was a Manhattan indictment in the Stormy Daniels hush payments. There was a civil lawsuit in which E. Jean Carroll described, you know, sexual abuse and defamation. And
So how do we see that improvement for Trump and that decline for DeSantis in the polls? How do we describe it? I think the decline for DeSantis, a lot of that comes down to having – he was peaking at the end of 2022.
And then because now he's seen as maybe the clearest alternative to Trump in the Republican field, he starts getting a lot of scrutiny. Trump starts attacking him a lot more. For instance, Trump's allies and Trump himself have criticized DeSantis. Basically, they've sort of harkened back to DeSantis' days as a sort of a tea partier. He was a co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus.
in the U.S. House of Representatives, which is sort of viewed as the most right-wing conservative group in the House, and talked about the fact that DeSantis had supported legislation that would have
potentially cut entitlements or raise the retirement age when it comes to things like Social Security and Medicare. And while that's sort of like a Paul Ryan mentality kind of thing – and actually there was an example where Trump even sort of connected him to Paul Ryan and he was like, Paul Ryan is a rhino and DeSantis is – DeSantis was sort of with Paul Ryan –
And it's like a different Republican Party, right? It's not the party of Paul Ryan anymore, small government reducing spending, especially on things like entitlements. So that's like an example of Trump attacking DeSantis. And at the same time, there's also a lot of media scrutiny on DeSantis where there were stories about him –
Some of them were about his personality. He was like coming off as like aloof to some people, maybe not great, glad handing with voters, maybe uncomfortable doing that to some extent, especially compared to Trump, actually, who is actually rather strong, sort of doing events and being sort of the center of the limelight in those situations. And also like even talking to people like Trump apparently actually enjoys that you can like
They're all sorts of funny pictures out there of Trump like with people being like, hey – so no, I'm just saying that I don't think people think about this as much but actually might be a strength for Trump. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So there's like that. And on top of that, I think there were also stories that were coming out about like DeSantis' relationship with other Republicans. So thinking about like campaign stuff and does he have support from – there's a thought process that you're hearing a lot of stories about elite Republicans being unhappy at the prospect of Trump. So here's this guy, right? So it seems like a really great opportunity for DeSantis to win over some support, get some endorsements from people, a sign of like –
Like things are moving. But instead, for example, you had half the Florida congressional delegation endorsing Trump and not DeSantis. DeSantis coming off as maybe cold to some other Republican high officials who were expecting more and they didn't get it. And then they were like, well, Trump called me. Trump wanted to talk to me.
So I think those create process stories that then are negative headlines. So you have just sort of this – it's like personality, campaign stuff, and at the same time, as you mentioned, Trump. Trump maybe getting a rallying effect out of the indictment in New York and that helping him at the same time that DeSantis was sliding.
Yeah, it's interesting what you describe over the past several months. I've been thinking in my head as the Ted Cruzification of Ron DeSantis, which is that when Ron DeSantis won his nearly 20 point victory in the Florida governor's race in 2022,
He had become popular and even had some crossover appeal based on probably two big things. One, his approach to COVID and sort of keeping the state open and the economy running. And two, this broad sort of general anti-woke pitch.
which didn't have so many details, certainly not the details that it has taken on over the past several months in the Florida state legislature. But those are two things that I would say he was probably on the right side of public opinion on, at least in Florida. And there was some crossover appeal on both, like the general sense that political correctness has run amok or, you know, wanting to prioritize the economy even in a COVID environment at times.
And in the time since then, he's taken on a different approach and one that I would compare more to the Ted Cruz approach of 2016, which is, you know, the six week abortion ban, really getting down into the specifics on the kind of legislation surrounding LGBTQ issues and education and everything.
And also, like you said, getting covered in a way where it's like, okay, maybe he is not so great with people. There's a lot of people who don't like him within the Republican Party, etc., etc., etc.
And as we all know, Ted Cruz lost the 2016 primary. He was appealing to the conservative Christian voter in Iowa. He won the Iowa caucuses, but that didn't serve him well throughout the rest of the primary process. It was the guy who was focusing more on immigration and maybe like the broader cultural issues and not really the, you know, spending cuts or abortion or LGBTQ issues of like yesteryear's conservative culture wars. And
And it did seem like he got mired down in those over the past several months as well. You know, it's hard to say specifically why polls go up or down or whatever, but I think he had gone from new culture wars warrior to old culture wars warrior in a way that didn't necessarily serve him.
I don't know, Galen. I think maybe we're all reading too much into this. I just think it's important to take a step back and look at exactly what DeSantis' decline has been, which is it hasn't been that Republican voters have soured on him specifically. It's just that they've kind of been gravitating toward Trump, right? So if you look at DeSantis' favorability ratings— He's fallen 10 points in the averages. But he still really has high, high favorables. Exactly. Yeah.
Right. This isn't because Republicans dislike him. It's because they see two candidates they really like, Trump and DeSantis. And right now they're gravitating toward Trump, but they can gravitate toward DeSantis. So, yeah, to cite some numbers in Jeffrey's piece, he had a nice little chart where you had the net favorability ratings of all the candidates. And DeSantis was was like approaching plus 60. Right. I don't know exactly what it was because I. Trump was at plus 60 and DeSantis was at plus 57. Yeah.
Among Republicans. So they're basically, right, it's among Republicans, but they're basically equally well-liked. There was also a recent CNN poll where they asked, who are you currently supporting? And also, who would you consider supporting? And Trump was, you know, 30 points ahead or 25 points ahead on currently supporting. But when you added up the currently supporting and consider supporting, they were both around 85%. So like, there's this big pool that they're both playing in. And then also I'll throw in another thing, which is that
morning consult asks people who their second choice is. And among Trump voters, half of them say that DeSantis is their second choice. So like, basically I think there is this like very large super majority of Republican primary voters who are
like both Trump and DeSantis are fluid between them. It could change. I think Trump's current like 30 point lead in the national polls, like is, is a very dominant lead that will be really tough for DeSantis to overcome. But like there, it's not like a general election where people's opinions are like really baked in and not supporting a candidate means you don't like them. Like the primaries are a different beast in that regard. The thing though,
though that I think is tough is I don't know how DeSantis really cuts into Trump's favorability and like that, you know, the sense of Republican primary voters liking him, which I think he has to do to some extent to be competitive without attacking Trump.
And of course, there are big risks to attacking Trump, because as soon as people attack Trump, then, you know, if you do it in the wrong way, and like there are a lot more wrong ways to do it than right ways, then that pisses off primary voters who like Trump even more. And so then you're the one who's going down in favorability numbers and not Trump. But on the other hand,
Something has to weaken Trump. And maybe that will be something Trump does to himself. I mean, certainly there are plenty of opportunities for that. I mean, maybe Trump doesn't show up for the debates and DeSantis does really well. And voters are like, Trump isn't showing up for this. Trump isn't serious. This DeSantis guy really seems like he's going to get things done. You know, I'm going to go to him. Like that's, you know, it's just one scenario. Like Trump could inflict all kinds of harm on himself.
But get indicted three more times. He could get indicted three more times. Although, I mean, the indictment thing is tricky because like, you know, if he gets indicted by the Biden Justice Department, our primary voter is going to like really see that as a ding on him. Or are they going to see that as a sign that he's just. Yeah, I think there's a point, though, where that will be right pile up on him. But I'm not sure there is a point.
Well, but it's a source of uncertainty, right? It's a way that Trump could stumble.
And it's just it just seems like the kind of thing where if you are unwilling to take the risk, then you you are probably sacrificing a big opportunity to cut into Trump's popularity because they need Trump to be more unpopular with the Republican base than he is now. I have sort of an example of like the difficulties that like DeSantis faces. And I think abortion is really good illustration of this as an issue.
So Trump has been a bit mealy-mouthed, a little hazy about a more restrictive abortion regime, like signing – if he got back to the White House, signing a national abortion ban that would be more restrictive.
So he's been a little – maybe even a little like caught flat-footed there. Like he's not really sure what to do. He's figuring that out. DeSantis has said sort of in response to this, like Trump criticizing him about signing the six-week ban in Florida. DeSantis said, well, I was proud to sign it. Do it again. Sort of maybe a signal to people on the right that like he might be willing to sign a more restrictive national abortion ban.
Thinking about the Ted Cruzification argument that Galen was just mentioning, Jeff Rowe actually by chance is running his campaign and he ran Cruz's campaign in 2016 for what it's worth. But by sort of moving to the right on the abortion ban thing, we saw some major Republican donors go like, oh, I don't know about that. That seems like trouble knowing what happened in the 2022 midterms. And it could also scare off some of the like somewhat conservative, even moderate Republicans involved.
… who are maybe just sort of automatically more skeptical, even anti-Trump in this primary, and they see Trump talking about entitlements and they're like, well, he's like maybe Trump is actually somewhat more moderate than DeSantis. Maybe DeSantis is running too far to the right, and so he might even be pushing those voters away, but he needs those voters and Trump supporters.
But at the same time, abortion could be an opportunity for DeSantis to get to Trump's right and win over some very conservative voters because Trump is doing better, different from 2016, doing better among very conservatives.
… than – versus somewhat conservative or even more moderate Republicans, which is a reversal because in 2016 he won in part because he had more support from the somewhat conservative batch of Republicans. So like I'm saying – but like I don't know that they're like perfectly tradeoffs where if you go for one, you actually entirely lose the others. I'm just saying that it is like a –
These decisions and how you try to appeal broadly to both, that's going to be a challenge for him in building this coalition of Trump skeptics and Trump fans, because he's got to do that to win. Well, and also, this is an area where Trump actually can point to an accomplishment that, again, that matters a lot to the GOP base. I mean, he can say, I'm pro-life. Look, my appointees are
that Roe versus Wade got overturned. I said I would get Roe versus Wade overturned and I did. And now I'm going to stop. But, you know, like I think, and he's not saying that that clearly, but like,
it's sort of, that has bought him a lot of goodwill. And so, you know, I think that is tricky too, because again, this is an area where Trump is kind of a known quantity and he's, and getting people to dislike him on this issue is more difficult than if he were just coming out of nowhere, you know, and doing the like Tim Scott, Nikki Haley thing of saying like, oh,
oh, I don't really know, maybe I'll sign a 20 week ban. Maybe I won't, because he's got this track record of actually having done the thing he said he would do in his first four years. Yeah. You know, I was looking through the crosstabs in the early Republican primary polling. And to your point, Jeff, I was trying to figure out where exactly DeSantis has advantages over Trump.
And yes, it's to some extent on voters who consider themselves moderate or whatever. But the clearest advantage is amongst college educated voters. And you wonder like...
Yes, he in his mind, he probably needs to win Iowa because that's the way he sort of starts the engine of, you know, the media attention picks up the momentum. We love that, you know, momentum in a primary, although political science research suggests that momentum is actually a real thing in primaries. The one time he feels like the one time. Exactly.
And so he feels like he needs to win Iowa, which means and also sees a clear opening to the right of Trump on issues like abortion. I think maybe like I don't know how this entitlement position will play out for him. Like if he can be a little more hawkish on the debt and deficit than Trump and try to play to his right there as well. We'll see how that plays out. But so he wants to win Iowa. So he wants to play to Trump's right. But in order to keep the people who got him to where he is today, he's
he needs to come off as not the Ted Cruz type. And so that'll be hard. It's a real juggling act for anyone. And it is interesting, the two states that are going to serve as our first tests, because they are two prime examples of places where Trump does have weakness. Iowa, the Christian right. New Hampshire, the college-educated, more moderate type.
And you Amelia, it looks like you're making a face that suggests you disagree with me. I don't. Why do you think Trump is weak with the Christian right? Because you just wrote a piece for FiveThirtyEight suggesting that he's having difficulties with evangelicals. He's having difficulties with a subset of evangelicals, but he's in a better position with evangelicals than he was in 2016. And that is the challenge for DeSantis right now.
Well, I think you're saying if DeSantis wants to go for beating him in Iowa, that creates problems in New Hampshire. There's always been a question.
Right. There's always been a question of Trump's relationship to the Christian right. He's obviously doing better now with all groups because he's polling at 53%. So he's doing better across the board with everyone as the clear front runner. Like he was getting 30% in New Hampshire and South Carolina and winning the primary because it was just such a crowded field. So he's doing better with everyone. But his vulnerabilities have always been this sort of like
weird two sides, which is conservatives don't necessarily trust him because he came on the field as not the conservative type, the foil to Ted Cruz, who was the Christian conservative. And then there's the sort of college educated New Hampshireite who is, you know, electing Chris Sununu. So I think there are two tests that will serve as, you know, one person might do well in New Hampshire, but not do well in Iowa. And all the candidates challenging Trump want to do well in both. Right. I mean, I just think that the place like Trump's vulnerability among conservatives
Christian right voters is right now appears to be a subset, which is college educated white evangelical Republicans. And that makes a lot of sense based on what we've been talking about. I do think Trump, despite not having been Christian conservatives first pick in 2016, has built up a lot of goodwill with that group generally. And so while, you know, other candidates probably do see an opening there, I
I think it's a really open question about whether that group as a whole
really weak for Trump or whether what we're seeing among Christian conservatives is actually what we're kind of seeing among Republicans overall, which is the college divide. Exactly. And when you're talking about evangelicals, college educated evangelicals are about a quarter of that group. So it's not like a big, it's not a big piece of the pie. And so can DeSantis make inroads in
I think it's possible. I think it's also a really open question how much this group cares about issues like abortion in a post-Roe environment. I mean, that's just something we're going to have to see. It's been a big voting issue in the past, but a lot of white evangelicals live in states that have banned abortion. And so even if there's no federal abortion ban, it's
they've seen things they're happy about happening in their state. So, you know, I think there's also a question about how dissatisfied are they really? Yeah. As we've talked about many times, voters usually show up to say F you and rarely thank you. All right. I want to wrap things up. But does anyone have anything on their minds that they want to get out there, like get on the record at the very beginning of this process before we close up shop for the day? I would just like to point out that
DeSantis used a lot of $10 words in that Twitter spaces. He's like, you can tell the dude has a JD from Harvard, and he's like kind of a nerd, which I say with no judgment. It's a sort of takes one to know one situation. We're all nerds here. I do not have a JD from Harvard, but I know that man's game, and I see it. Yeah.
You're like, I know all of the constitutional law that he was talking about, which is why I can call him out as a nerd. Yeah, let's talk about Chevron deference. He talked about Chevron deference, which is the Supreme Court doctrine about how much power administrative agencies have. I mean, this is a guy who really...
He clearly likes to think deeply about the law and about his power and about what he can get done. And I think that makes him a really interesting candidate in a lot of ways because he seems to be very calculating, seems to be very smart, seems to kind of have a plan for what he wants to do in a way that Trump certainly never has.
But also, you know, I just don't know how it's going to play if you show up at an Elks Club in Iowa and you start talking about accreditation cartels in the Department of Education in the way that, you know, it would if you're in a Twitter Spaces interaction. I'll tell you something, it gives Ted Cruz, it gives Ted Cruz vibes. Yeah, I mean, it's just, yeah, exactly. Also an Ivy League JD, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah.
Yes. What? Oh, yeah. Yeah, Ted Cruz, also an Ivy League JD, yes. Also an Ivy League JD. Yeah, so I think one thing I'll be really curious about is as we move into the actual campaigning phase,
how much DeSantis can code switch and, you know, be the person that he clearly is where he, you know, like you can imagine him talking to the Harvard Fed sock about all of, you know, all of the things he was talking about in the Twitter spaces. How much can he also be someone who goes to an environment where people do not want to talk about esoteric Supreme Court doctrines and
And can he connect with those people? He talked a lot during his Twitter spaces panel about how he has this blue collar background. That's clearly something he's going to try to punch up. And I'm really curious to see how he does that on the campaign trail. All right. Well, let's leave things there for today. Thank you, Amelia, Nathaniel and Jeff.
Thanks, Galen. Thanks, Galen. My name is Galen Drew. Tony Chow is in the control room and also on video editing. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple podcast store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.
