Ron DeSantis, the GOP governor of Florida hoping to win his party’s presidential nomination for 2024, isn’t doing particularly well, campaign-wise.
With voting what’s now just months away, he’s still not taking off in polling, and while pre-election surveys are never perfect, they’re often close and provide a useful indicator for the race’s direction. Both in swing states and on the national level, Donald Trump still leads — substantially. At Ron’s campaign, he reportedly raised $8.2 million on his first day as an actual candidate… which is approaching half the total that he raised at that committee across the entire second quarter of this year, meaning the pace of Ron’s campaign fundraising substantially plummeted. His overall total was $20 million, which “means that after Day One, he raised an average of just over $300,000 a day for the next 36 days of the fundraising quarter,” POLITICO noted.
Trump’s campaign fundraising for the second quarter reached $35 million. The campaign numbers are generally to be distinguished from fundraising totals at super PACs, which are formally external political organizations that support the main campaign’s ambitions while operating under somewhat different rules for donations.
In polling, DeSantis actually reached a higher average on the national level before his campaign announcement than he’s returned to since. He was running very close to Trump earlier this year. Now? Donald is 30 percent ahead.
At the national level, DeSantis could no doubt be expected to implement rather draconian policies if he ever got the chance to serve as president. He has already spoken of ending birthright citizenship with undocumented immigrants in mind and expressed support for using lethal force against individuals committing what’s essentially just property damage along southern border barriers. In Florida, he has also targeted abortion, LGBTQ+ communities, free expression, educational freedom, and more — a destructive record and one totally at odds with the sham vision of Ron and his supporters as defenders of freedom, or something.
