Ron DeSantis' Path to Victory Per Leaked Donor Brief Via Florida Politics
Ron DeSantis kicked off his bid for the White House with a donor meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel in Miami earlier this week. This exclusive gathering of high-profile supporters and donors being briefed on DeSantis’ Path to Victory was closed to the media. A leaked 42.5-minute audio recording of the presentation by the DeSantis campaign was first reported by Florida Politics. The first nine minutes of the brief consists of Ryan Tyson, a top advisor to Team DeSantis, describing the types of Republican Primary voters he has identified through his own field research and public opinion polls.
Tyson describes the types of Republican Primary voters as:
- 35% Only Trump
- 25% w/Ron DeSantis and ‘ready to move on from Trump’
- 20% Never Trump or DeSantis
- 5% Wait and See voters who will vote for someone who can defeat Biden in the General Election
- 15% America First voters who are currently with Trump, but are soft supporters
Tyson believes ‘America First’ voters are where the “battlefield actually exists” and those voters will ultimately “collapse to DeSantis” because his favorability with this group is in the middle to upper 70s.
According to Tyson’s numbers, DeSantis trails Trump by 5% assuming DeSantis receives the ‘Wait and See’ voters as the only candidate who could defeat Biden – 35% Only Trump to 30% DeSantis voters (25% w/Ron DeSantis + 5% Wait and See) – with ‘America First’ voters outstanding.
For DeSantis to overtake Trump, DeSantis would need to persuade at least two-thirds of ‘America First’ voters (10%) to abandon their soft support for Trump. Tyson says DeSantis’ favorability with ‘America First’ voters is “mid to upper 70s,” creating a narrow path to victory for DeSantis. If Tyson’s numbers are correct, DeSantis would beat Trump by 2.5% overall – 41.25% DeSantis to 38.75% Trump.
These numbers reflect a national outlook on the Republican Presidential contest. As mentioned in the brief, Republican delegates are not distributed at a national level, but at the state level. Each state Republican Party determines their allocation method for delegates – some states allocate delegates proportionally like Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada and some states allocate delegates as winner-take-all like South Carolina and Florida. If Desantis’ numbers were to falter in any of the winner-take-all states, the path to victory becomes narrower.
Currently, in the 2024 Republican Presidential Preference Primary tallyED poll, 107 votes have been cast from registered Florida Republican voters. DeSantis leads with 43.93%. Trump is close behind at 41.12%. The collection of midfield candidates take 12.14% with 2.8% Undecided.