At this early stage, it’s a two-horse race between former President Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSandis. Trump kicked off his 2024 campaign at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday. His goal is to avenge his loss in 2020 and become the first president since Grover Cleveland to serve non-consecutive terms. DeSantis won a resounding victory in his re-election battle on Election Day, crushing his Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist, by about 20 points. The result sent a strong message about his potential electability in 2024. There is an obvious difference between the two. DeSantis has not yet said he will run for president. If he does, he would clearly be Trump’s most serious challenger. How do Trump and DeSandis match up in key areas?

Popularity

Speculation about a potential Trump-DeSandis contest has been building for months. Polls before the midterm elections almost always showed the former president leading — often by wide margins — among Republican voters. There were exceptions to this pattern, but they were rare enough to be noteworthy, such as when DeSantis pulled ahead of Trump in a poll of likely New Hampshire Republican voters in June. The midterms have changed everything — at least for now. DeSantis has been beaten by Trump in several polls after Trump suffered a poor performance in the midterm elections. Some of the former president’s high-profile supporters lost. Several party officials, including Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, have argued that Trump is damaging the party’s brand. The popularity shift from Trump to DeSandis was particularly pronounced in several polls conducted early in the primary states by the conservative Caucus for Growth. An Iowa poll put DeSantis 11 points ahead of Trump, a marked change from a similar poll in August when the Florida governor trailed by 15 points. In the most recent poll in New Hampshire, DeSantis led by about 15 points, despite the two candidates being tied in August. National opinion polls point in a similar direction. An Economist-YouGov poll this week found that 46 percent of Republican voters would prefer DeSantis to be the nominee, compared with 39 percent who would favor Trump. The Economist poll also revealed Trump’s Achilles heel: the sheer number of people who dislike him. When poll respondents were asked whether they had favorable or unfavorable views of various politicians, both Trump and DeSantis hit exactly the same number of Americans with a favorable view: 41 percent. But while 37 percent had an unfavorable view of DeSantis, the number who viewed Trump unfavorably was much higher, at 52 percent. The same pattern prevailed among Republican and conservative voters. Among self-identified conservatives, Trump’s unfavorable number was nearly double that of DeSandis — 25% to 14%. It is, of course, possible that DeSantis is at a high — and Trump at a low ebb — right now. But based on the polls alone, Trump is no longer the favorite.

Fundraiser

When it comes to the money race, only one thing seems clear – both Trump and DeSantis will have all the cash they need to be competitive. Trump’s current total war chest is estimated at about $100 million. DeSantis is coming off one of the most lavishly financed gubernatorial campaigns in history and has about $90 million to draw on. Both men have raised money primarily through political action committees (PACs) rather than their actual campaigns. OpenSecrets, a website that tracks money in politics, noted in mid-September that DeSantis had so far raised $31.4 million directly through his campaign, but an additional $146 million to his state PAC, Friends of Ron DeSantis. Trump’s primary fundraising vehicle thus far has been the Save America PAC.
Trump, having declared his candidacy, is now subject to somewhat tighter limits, including a contribution cap for donors who give directly to his campaign. In theory, campaign-related activities should be funded from the campaign account rather than undertaken by the PAC — but in practice that distinction can be too fuzzy for many ethics watchdogs to like. There’s another aspect to the money battle — the recent flamboyant display of coolness by some major Democratic donors toward Trump. A report in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post on Wednesday noted that three prominent New York billionaires — cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, metals magnate Andy Sabin and Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman — had all come out against Trump. , often in emphatic terms. As a practical matter, however, Trump’s massive popularity among his base likely means he can be sure of a continued stream of small-dollar donations, reducing any reliance on big donors.

Policy

Virtually no one expects the Trump-DeSandis primary, if it happens, to be contested on the finer points of politics. Such a race would be very different from the typical pattern of intra-party races where a hardliner is running against a moderate. Both Trump and de Sandys are aligned with the populist, culture war right rather than the old and diminished GOP establishment. Trump has never been associated with consistency, having been pro-choice on the abortion issue before entering politics and, even while president, doing a 180 on critical issues like North Korea. In 2017, Trump derided North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as “rocket man” and threatened to “totally destroy” the country. The next year Trump joked that he and Kim “fell in love” after exchanging letters. DeSantis, for his part, is best known nationally for the immigrant flights he organized in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and for his support of legislation restricting the teaching of sexuality in schools. The latest controversy also led to a fight with the Walt Disney Company. After winning re-election, DeSantis boasted in his victory speech that Florida was “where the woke go to die” — the kind of phrase Trump could say he didn’t make first. $1B worth of counterfeit brand-name goods seized in California so far this year NASA launches website to track Artemis I Conservative writer Jim Geraghty argued this week in the Washington Post that DeSantis has “the policy goals of a traditional conservative Republican, not the coordinated agenda that characterized the Trump years.” But on the issues that most animate the Republican electorate — fierce opposition to President Biden and the Democrats, immigration, crime and the economy — there is precious little to differentiate Trump and DeSandis. Their primary matchup, if it happens, will likely come down to who can fire up the base more effectively — and who can convince the GOP they can win in 2024.