Friends become foes in the 2024 Republican primary
By Asher Esty ’25
Don’t shoot your teammate in the foot! This idea seems simple enough, but the Republican primary candidates do not understand the message and instead fight with each other, turning former teammates into enemies. Former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have been feuding for months, and recently, the animosity between the two men has increased. Their fight comes before the impending 2024 spring primary elections, where both men are clamoring for the Republican presidential nomination to face Joe Biden. Although many factors are hurting the Republican Party’s performances in polls, the main reason for their low numbers is the feud between Trump and DeSantis.
The best way to understand why Trump and DeSantis’s quarrel is impacting polls is to start from the beginning. When Ron DeSantis announced his official 2024 campaign for president, Trump responded by writing on Truth Social, “His whole campaign will be a disaster. WATCH!” – a scathing comment from someone who had been the Florida Governor’s ally. Trump was a major contributor to DeSantis’s gubernatorial victory in 2018, tweeting in 2017, “[DeSantis] loves our Country and is a true FIGHTER!” The two had a history of supporting each other in elections, so many voters were confused when Trump turned on DeSantis in October of 2021 after rumors came out that DeSantis was starting a 2024 presidential campaign. They had gone from being seen as potential running mates to adversaries in a matter of hours.
Their divide is only increasing, with Trump and DeSantis targeting each other during rallies and media conferences. After DeSantis stated that he’d be able to push through conservative motions after eight years of office, Trump retorted with, “It’ll take me six months,” to which DeSantis fired back, “Why didn’t he do it in his first four years?” DeSantis later blamed Trump for the Republican Party’s failures in the 2022 midterm elections, calling to “shake this culture of losing that’s infected our party in recent years” – a clear jab at the former president. Poking holes in each other’s campaigns only has the effect of exposing those weaknesses to other adversaries. For a party without a direct plan for the future, the path to success is to unite against a common enemy, not to tear down its own candidates. As they verbally weaken each other’s chances for success, the question is how much this dissension among Republicans is affecting polling numbers.
Quite a lot. Trump is currently polling around 55.1% of all Republicans, while DeSantis is polling at about 13.5%. A party this weak and this divided will harm the possibility of either man winning the presidency. For example, in 2020, Trump won 46.8% of the popular vote. If he loses 20% of his voters to DeSantis, the conflict between candidates rises, and consequently, the chances for Republicans to simply abstain from voting is much higher. As Trump continues to turn his supporters against DeSantis, and vice versa, some voters will not vote for the other candidate, and that will significantly hurt the Republican Party in the polls. It is also important to recognize DeSantis’ recent decline in the polls, as shown in the graph; however, the presence of another popular candidate weakens Trump in the Republican primary election.
Another one of the biggest issues that has arisen out of the Trump-DeSantis conflict is that of radical figureheads within the conservative party. Trump, who is quite conservative in his values, is the leader of the Republican Party, yet DeSantis has positioned himself as even more conservative than Trump, which wards off moderate voters. Their feud causes the two men to increasingly adopt more extremist standpoints to connect with their fanatic conservative supporters, which leaves no room for more balanced reforms. The fact that the only two major candidates in the party are either “Christian Conservative” or “Maga Conservative” scares away independents in key swing states. The radical reforms that Trump and DeSantis have been challenging each other to push are dissuading voters from voting for Republicans. In fact, in the 2020 presidential election, of the seven swing states, six of them gave Biden their votes. With another important election around the corner, the stakes are higher than ever for the Republican Party. Having the two major candidates radicalize the party is clearly not the right step to victory.
In addition to the clash between Trump and DeSantis, Trump is also facing notable legal charges, both civil and criminal. DeSantis has used these charges to once again make a stab at the former president, commenting, “I think the chance of getting elected after being convicted of a felony is as close to zero as you can get.” DeSantis is using Trump’s legal troubles as a way to directly attack his legitimacy and capability of fulfilling the duties of the president, which marks a huge moment of “disobedience” to the former president and his ongoing claims that these lawsuits are liberal-pushed agendas. Trump’s legal case might be hurting him, but clearly, DeSantis is hurting him a lot more.
The problems with the Republican party started with the in-fighting between Trump and DeSantis. With these two hurling insults at each other and tearing up each other’s campaigns, the margin only grows between Biden and the Republican Party. In recent months, Trump has surged ahead of DeSantis in the polls, but DeSantis is only growing desperate and attacking Trump with even more malice than before. DeSantis isn’t going down easily, and if he is going down, he will drag Donald Trump down with him. Nobody knows what will happen when the 2024 presidential election arrives; however, if there is one thing we do know, it’s that Trump and DeSantis’s rivalry will be the biggest harm to whoever the Republican nominee is.
Pictured: Trump embraces DeSantis after a rally in 2017, showing his support for the Florida Governor-to-be