Was DeSantis above the fray or just forgettable?
Tiana Lowe Doescher
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At the first presidential debate of the Republican primary, Nikki Haley shined, Chris Christie blustered, Mike Pence sparred in uncharacteristically feisty fashion, and Vivek Ramaswamy got down and dirty and personal with just about every candidate in the arena.
The man polling in second nationally only to Donald Trump may have been in the center of the stage, but Ron DeSantis was far from the center of the drama. Depending on who you ask, the Florida governor was either smartly staying above the fray or a second-place-and-sliding also-ran who receded into irrelevance. While our first available post-debate polling shows that DeSantis avoided any candidacy-ending catastrophes a la Michael Dukakis in 1988, DeSantis’s wooden and packaged performance may have cost him a shot at something even more crucial: Momentum.
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DeSantis played it safe. He finally shut the hell up about wokeness and paid lip service to caring about the economy, the single most important issue according to Republican voters suffering under a 16% increase in prices since President Joe Biden took office. He correctly touted his triumphant record in Florida and even tried to smile.
But his body language ranged from angry to woefully insecure. In perhaps the most damning moment of the night, when asked by the debate moderators if they would still support Trump if he became the party’s nominee and was convicted, DeSantis looked at Ramaswamy before raising his own hand in agreement. Next to the high-energy, rollicking, and joyful belligerence of Ramaswamy, DeSantis’s misery was all the more evident. Whereas Ramaswamy seemed like he was loving every moment in the spotlight, DeSantis looked like he would rather be anywhere else.
So what does the polling say?
The FiveThirtyEight poll conducted with Ipsos and the Washington Post found that DeSantis won a thin plurality of GOP primary voters. Just 29% said he performed the best, while 26% said Ramaswamy did. But buried beneath the topline findings, the poll finds that DeSantis did very little for his overall momentum in the race.
Whereas Nikki Haley garnered new support from 16.5% of those polled, DeSantis only expanded his margin by 4.5 points. The best news for him is that Trump actually lost nearly five points of support by forgoing the debate stage. All in all, more than two-thirds of those polled said they would consider DeSantis after the debate compared to the three in five who said they are still considering Trump. Haley and Ramaswamy are being considered by 46.7% and 46.3% of those polled, respectively.
But DeSantis has actually lost support in the betting odds, with investors pricing in just a 7.8% chance that he wins the primary. Again, Haley had the greatest gain, with her odds nearly doubling to 3.3%.
A debate dial test conducted by Navigator similarly found that 45% of Wisconsin independents thought that Haley won the debate, compared to 24% who thought DeSantis won. (A plurality of 30%, however, thought that Ramaswamy lost the debate.)
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DeSantis acted like a front-runner, happy to let the rest of the stage spar with each other, but he’s not the front-runner. He’s not even an unchallenged runner-up to Trump. He’s the guy in 14% nationally with a trio of insurgents nipping at his heels, at least one of whom has climbed into the double digits in multiple key primary states.
It’s true that his debate service won’t hurt him, but receding into irrelevance might be worse than scandal at this point in a presidential contest. As a greater writer than this one once noted, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.