Analysis: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis dropping out of the Republican race wasn’t a surprise to anyone – but doing it so early absolutely was, writes US Correspondent Logan Church.
Political polls are a tricky thing. If you are a political candidate, you watch the rise and fall of every number. Every decimal point. Every move.
Publicly, of course, you use them as a piñata.
“Polls are meaningless,” you cry. “The only poll that matters is election day.”
But sometimes the numbers just don’t lie.
That is the situation Florida Governor Ron DeSantis found himself in.
The hard-right Florida Governor surprised many of his own staffers just weeks into voting for a presidential nominee. (Source: 1News)
He came a far distant second place in Iowa, which held its first-in-nation caucuses last week, gaining almost 22 percent of the Republican vote there.
“We just got our ticket punched out of Iowa!” he said to a loud crowd of enthusiastic reporters.
Unfortunately for the DeSantis campaign, Donald Trump won more than twice that.
He came onto the national presidential race with a picture-perfect family at his side, flashy campaign videos, and millions of dollars in support. Much of that was pushed into campaigning in Iowa.
He made a point of visiting all 99 counties to try and connect with voters. To paint himself as a strong, Republican alternative to the guy who’s currently facing 91 criminal charges.
“Look at what we did in Florida,” he said. Repeatedly. Pushing his work in his state as a template for the kind of president he wanted to be if he won the White House.
But today, posting a video on X, ironically the platform he announced his presidency on in an ill-fated Twitter Spaces event, it was all over rover.
“We left it all out on the field,” he said. “If there was anything I could do to produce a favourable outcome, more campaign stops, more interviews, I would do it.”
He said he couldn’t ask his supporters to keep donating and working on his campaign if there was no clear path to victory.
“I've had disagreements with Donald Trump...Trump is superior to the current incumbent, Joe Biden, he has my endorsement.”
New Hampshire, the next state in which party faithful will choose their preferred candidate, was not going to result in a win for DeSantis.
A new CNN poll had him at about 6%.
That only leaves former UN ambassador and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley as the other viable Republican alternative.
Ultimately, DeSantis wasn’t unliked across much of this country’s Republicans. Many of the people I spoke to in Iowa were supportive of him, or at least liked him – even if they weren’t voting for him.
Unfortunately for DeSantis, they, along with a majority of Republicans across the country, currently like Trump more.
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