A year ago there seemed to be a serious threat to Trump in the GOP. His name was DeSantis.
In March 2023, DeSantis won 35% to Trump’s 40% of GOP registered voters. (Haley was at 5%)
But DeSantis only lost ground through the year, while Trump gained.
Still, Trump didn’t move much past 50% until after Jan. 2024 once the primary process began.
As of Feb 5-15, 2024, pre-South Carolina primary, Trump holds 73% nationally to Haley’s 15% and DeSantis is no longer a candidate.
Trump rose modestly in the spring, then more in the fall, with a big jump by February. Haley was slow to rise, then bumped up in Nov. and Feb., but to only 15%.
The race that could have been.
DeSantis not only started strong but was a threat to Trump from within the Trump wing of the party. In March 2023 DeSantis got 32% among Reps *favorable* to Trump, plus 45% among those unfavorable to Trump.
Had DeSantis been able to expand that incursion into Trump land this could have been a real race. He did not. Instead DeSantis’s support fell across both Trump-favorable and Trump-unfavorable Republicans. Whether because of Trump’s effective attacks on DeSantis or the failures of DeSantis, the race that could have been was not.
Nikki Haley instead is the last contender standing against Trump, and yet she fails to reach even 20% support. She never was a contender with those who like Trump, not reaching even 6% among the Trump-favorable Republicans. But she has captured the wing of the GOP that does not like Trump, winning 65% of those Republicans.
For her, the tragedy is that nothing in the campaign succeeded in increasing the share of those unfavorable to Trump. Instead the opposite occurred, Trump’s favorability hovered around 70% until July, then rose to 80% in Sept. and stands at 84% in February.
As Haley has won an increasing share, now 2/3rds, of Republicans unfavorable to Trump, that pool has declined by half, from 30% to 16%. Even taking all of this smaller pool cannot make an alternative to Trump competitive in the primaries.
A year ago, 30% of Republicans were unfavorable to Trump, and DeSantis was eating into Trump-favorable Republicans. His effort failed. Haley has never won more than negligible support from the Trump-favorables, and even as she has consolidated the support of Trump-unfavorable Republicans, that group has been shrinking, to now less than one in five Republicans.
In March 2023 the GOP had a significant 30% who did not like Trump and a majority who supported someone else or were undecided. That moment has passed.