Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has yet to jump into the race for the Republican party's 2024 presidential nomination, and there are growing indications that he may not be able to pull away a substantial segment of Donald Trump supporters that would allow him to not only beat the former president in the GOP primaries but also win in a general election.
According to a report from Politico's Steven Shepard, DeSantis is going through all of the motions of running for president, without actually announcing, but he is running into speedbumps when it comes to rallying conservative voters to his camp.
Put simply by Shepard, DeSantis' presidential drive has "hit the skids."
What should be of concern to the DeSantis camp is the inability to pull away what are now being called "beer track" voters, described as having "lower incomes and levels of educational attainment," who have strongly allied themselves with the former president.
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As the Politico report notes, it's getting worse for the high-profile Florida governor.
"While DeSantis is still the preferred candidate of high-income voters and those with college degrees, he is showing signs of bleeding there, too. In recent weeks, Trump’s numbers have been rising among all Republicans, including with GOP voters most skeptical of his candidacy in the so-called 'wine track,'" Shepard is reporting.
"It’s obviously still early in the 2024 contest: DeSantis isn’t even a declared candidate yet, and most of the new polls were conducted prior to the news that Trump may soon face criminal charges in New York related to an alleged hush-money payment he made during his 2016 campaign to hide an extramarital affair. Other potential legal troubles loom on the horizon," he continued before adding, "But even if the campaign hasn’t officially started, the recent polling trends do provide positive data for Trump and troubling numbers for DeSantis."
"For now, however, the greatest divide with potential to define the 2024 Republican primary is class. Don’t expect the most educated Republicans to fall in love with Trump, or the 'beer track' to abandon him en masse. But any marked shifts among these groups in the coming months could make the difference," he predicted.
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