OPINION:
As the Republican primary contest becomes more crowded and more complicated and increases in tempo, and in the wake of the legally shaky indictment of former President Donald Trump, it might be worth taking a look at the results of recent opinion research.
Mr. Trump has a comfortable lead in the battle for the Republican nomination. Depending on the survey, his advantage ranges from about 20 percentage points to as much as 45 percentage points.
Those numbers have been consistent for some time now, although the lack of data about actual Republican primary voters — most surveys at this point are of registered voters rather than likely voters or, better yet, likely primary voters — is something that should be watched.
Surveying respondents who more closely match those voters likely to vote in the Republican primary would probably narrow the range of Mr. Trump’s lead.
At the same time, the Trump campaign needs to be aware of an emerging thread of data that suggests that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may do better in the general election.
New survey results from Public Opinion Strategies build on previous results and are starting to frame a coherent story about how the general election might look with different Republican candidates.
The new survey results indicate that Mr. DeSantis would do better than Mr. Trump in the general election in specific battleground states. For example, in Georgia, Mr. DeSantis leads President Biden by 3 percentage points in a general election matchup.
In the same matchup, Mr. Trump loses Georgia to Mr. Biden by 3 points.
In Pennsylvania, Mr. DeSantis runs 2 points better than Mr. Biden while Mr. Trump runs 4 points behind Mr. Biden.
Back in April, Mr. Trump trailed Mr. Biden in Pennsylvania by the same 4 percentage points. Mr. DeSantis led Mr. Biden in Pennsylvania by 3 points.
More disconcertingly, half of the respondents in the Pennsylvania survey strongly agreed with the statement that “there’s no way I would ever vote to elect Donald Trump as president.”
In Arizona, the current spread between the candidates appears greater. Mr. DeSantis runs 6 points better than Mr. Biden while Mr. Trump runs 3 points behind the president. That is also a greater margin than was evident in polling done in April.
Then, Mr. Trump trailed Mr. Biden in Arizona by just 1 percentage point, while Mr. DeSantis led the president in Arizona by 6 percentage points.
If those numbers sound familiar, it may be because they are. Back in April, Mr. Trump’s polling firm released the results of a survey done for The Wall Street Journal.
Those results indicated that Mr. DeSantis would defeat Mr. Biden nationally by 3 percentage points while Mr. Trump would lose nationally by 3 percentage points — the same margin by which he lost in 2020.
The difference in national performance between Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump when tested against Mr. Biden was the same in April — 6 points — as it is in Pennsylvania and Georgia at the moment.
Does any of this matter at this point? Probably not. We are a long way from Milwaukee (site of the 2024 Republican National Convention), and there is still a lot of game to be played.
That said, at some point, presidential nominating contests not involving incumbents usually devolve into questions of which candidate is most electable.
The initial data suggests that at least one Republican, Mr. DeSantis, in the crowded field is likely to do better than Mr. Trump in the battleground states.
If that holds, it would be a powerful argument for Mr. DeSantis as the primary season proceeds to its conclusion.
• Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, is president of MWR Strategies. He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House. He can be reached at mike@mwrstrat.com.
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