‘Flailing, Messy’: Why Is Ron DeSantis Struggling to Gain Traction?

It’s been just under a month since Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced his intention to challenge Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination.

Since the launch, which has been described as a “messy” Twitter spaces interview with Elon Musk, DeSantis has failed to gain traction beyond the twenty to twenty-five percent of polling support he started with.

In some early primary states, the polls are a little tighter. Nationally, however, it’s entirely Trump’s field of play as USAToday points out:

While Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is out there fighting to defeat an invisible thing he calls “the woke mind virus,” his young presidential campaign is stumbling like a drunk fraternity bro with flop sweat.

It all began – poorly – with a messy Twitter launch last month. Since then, the governor’s campaign has generated little more than fodder for memes showing him looking uncomfortable around other people. Voters aren’t rallying around his incessant tilting at woke windmills or his perversely weird war with Disney.

And his chief rival, former President Donald Trump, has remained the far-and-away front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination despite being indicted for the second time this year.

It seems the governor might want to focus less on the question “How can I stop wokeness?” and more on “Why am I losing to someone who keeps getting arrested?”

The conventional wisdom, for whatever that’s worth in modern politics, believed that once DeSantis announced, he would get a bump in support as voters would now see the much-anticipated presidential run was more than a rumor.

Furthermore, DeSantis’s popularity in his home state, and broad national name recognition among Republicans, would surely put him in immediate contention with Trump all over the primary map.

Continuing with the USAToday story, the Desantis team is still searching for the post-announcement polling bump:

At that point, according to the FiveThirtyEight national average, DeSantis was polling at 20.6% compared with Trump at 54.3%. The Florida governor is a big name – touted incessantly on Fox News and in other conservative media circles – so one would expect a polling bump after he formally announced his run for president.

But there was no bump. At the midpoint of this month, DeSantis was polling at 21.4%, an increase of less than a percentage point. Trump, meanwhile, was down to 53.4%, a decrease of less than a percentage point.

Underwhelming, to put it generously.

Being stuck in the low twenties while Trump easily holds fifty percent of Republican primary voters does not make for a convincing narrative.

There are surely more shoes to drop with regard to the recent Trump indictment and perhaps more legal trouble brewing in Georgia, but will it make a difference?

Only time will tell but for some candidates, circumstances simply can’t overcome personality deficiencies when it comes to retail politicking. With the campaign trail in full swing, DeSantis seems to be hit or miss with voters. Some like him in person but many give him mediocre reviews. They like his policies, they like what he’s doing in Florida, but he simply hasn’t found a way to make those personal connections.

When it comes to presidential politics, there’s a certain “it” factor that winning candidates possess. Bill Clinton had it, George W. Bush had it, Barack Obama had it, and Donald Trump has it.

The jury is still out as to whether Ron DeSantis can bring the “A” game needed to overtake Trump on the national stage.

So far, he’s stuck playing a supporting role.