It appears to be repeating the history of 2016 once again.
The opposition against Donald J. Trump was heavily divided back then, resulting in Mr. Trump winning the Republican primary with less than half of the vote, as the party couldn’t unite behind one candidate.
With Mike Pence, Chris Christie, Tim Scott, and Nikki Haley joining the race, there is a possibility of similar conditions arising again. Despite Ron DeSantis failing to consolidate Trump-skeptic voters and donors, polls in this cycle indicate that he has the majority support of Republican voters who don’t endorse Mr. Trump, unlike the previous primary, where five candidates claimed to be the strongest “not-Trump” candidate, but none could consolidate the opposition. However, Mr. DeSantis’s share of not-Trump voters has remained unchanged, implying that he has mainly lost support to Mr. Trump.
If another candidate gains popularity, Mr. DeSantis may become vulnerable. It’s not hard to see where Mr. DeSantis might stumble; Mr. Pence may run as a vehemently anti-abortion candidate, risking losing socially conservative evangelical Iowa caucusgoers. On the left, Mr. Christie may run as a forcefully anti-Trump candidate, appealing to moderate voters.
While these threats may seem genuine, Mr. Christie’s and Mr. Pence’s favorability ratings are staggeringly low. According to the most recent Monmouth poll, Mr. Pence’s favorability rating was 46 percent among Republican leaners, while Mr. Christie’s ratings were even worse, with just 21 percent of favorable views.
Despite the narrow path to victory for Mr. DeSantis, he is the only viable candidate in the race. At the moment, Mr. DeSantis is strong enough to deny any opportunity to another not-Trump candidate. Nonetheless, his significant problem is Mr. Trump, who is a much stronger primary candidate now than he was in 2015-16 and beats Mr. DeSantis even in a one-on-one race.
