Attention has focused on Ron DeSantis losing ground to Donald Trump in GOP primary polling since January. What has been largely overlooked is that DeSantis has also fallen in general election matchups against Biden. This is especially problematic for a claim that Trump is less electable.
Let’s work through our standard “four-charts” to see what has happened in the Biden v DeSantis horserace. (For an explanation of the value of these four different pictures of the race see my earlier post here.)
The trend chart, showing support for each candidate, shows a clear downturn for DeSantis since January. In late fall he enjoyed a surge and Biden declined a bit in their matchups. But since early January, DeSantis’ trend has sloped down, with one brief upturn. Over this same period, Biden has maintained stable support (as he has vs Trump too).
There is a lot of noise in the polls, as the mix of red and blue points in the chart shows. In January the candidates were tied but DeSantis’ decline has given Biden a consistent, though small, edge recently.
The clear change in direction of the trend is clearer in the margin trends in the second chart. Biden’s lead over DeSantis declined through the fall, but bounced in early January, changing direction quite clearly. The size of the margin is still small, under 3 percentage points, so no one should read this as an insurmountable advantage. But the shift of momentum is striking, and mirrors DeSantis’ more widely remarked upon decline vs Trump in the nomination contest.
Charts 3 and 4 are the longer-term view of how the distribution of poll results has shifted. Here the focus is not on the “point estimate” of the trend line, but rather the wide range of polling over two 2-month periods. Polls vary a lot, and it is hard to appreciate how that wide variation none-the-less reveals change in the distribution of candidate support. Shifts in the distribution of support over a longer period is more convincing evidence of meaningful change than a brief shift in the trend line, let alone a single poll that may be an outlier.
Chart 3 shows the distribution of DeSantis and Biden support in January-February compared to the distribution in March through early May. In Jan.-Feb. the DeSantis and Biden distributions largely overlap, though there is more spread to DeSantis support with a fair bit of poor performance to the left and some strong performance to the right, compared to the somewhat less variable Biden support. But in the two months since March, the DeSantis distribution has clearly shifted to the left and Biden a little to the right, with most of the overlap of distributions now to DeSantis’ disadvantage. There is also still more spread to DeSantis’ support than for the somewhat more consistent Biden.
This shift is also clear with the distributions for the margin between the two candidates in Chart 4. In Jan-Feb the distribution peaks very close to a tie, a margin of zero. Biden led in 19 polls and DeSantis in 13, with 4 ties. Since March the distribution has shifted to the right, with a peak at about a 2-point Biden advantage and considerably more polls showing Biden ahead, 28, than DeSantis, 11, with 3 ties.
All four of these charts show the decline in DeSantis support vs Biden in the general election. That doesn’t mean the outcome is set. Races shift over time, sometimes (at least in the past) rather sharply. In the modern period we have seen closer races and less variability as partisans have found it close to impossible to bring themselves to cross over for the other party. So small margins are to be expected and modest changes signal momentum shifts.
Ron DeSantis still has to defeat Donald Trump before he can face Joe Biden in November 2024. His recent weakening versus Biden undercuts his claim to be more electable than Trump. If he announces his candidacy in the coming weeks, as expected, he’ll have his chance to change the momentum once more. If he succeeds in that the charts will tell that story too.