In retrospect, one of the more remarkable aspects of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential candidacy was that he was viewed by many voters as moderate.
There was an obvious reason for this: Trump’s lack of a political record combined with his willingness to advocate nearly any position he thought might improve his position helped shroud the extent to which his presidency would adhere to the right-wing ideological fringe. Not that there weren’t indicators, certainly; it’s hard to characterize a guy who endorses a religion-based ban on migration as particularly liberal. But he was unquestionably a blank slate politically, in part thanks to his aggressive apathy about policy.
When Barack Obama was first elected president in 2008, his track record wasn’t much longer. He’d served in the Senate for about two years when he declared his bid for the presidency. His politics were clearer than Trump’s, but his appeal was rooted far more in the emotional shift he promised than in the policies he pledged to support.
Each candidate had another asset, of course: They were challenges to the existing power structure. Obama was an outsider relative to both Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Trump was an outsider relative to, well, everyone. This overlaps with the lack of a track record; voting with party leaders for years is how you demonstrate your priorities — and a way you get tied to the establishment.
Joe Biden’s presidential victory in 2020 was not a function of his blank-slate past or his outsider status. It was the opposite: People had a sense of who he was and preferred that to what they’d seen from Trump. He wasn’t an outsider, but he was perceived as moderate, helping him to secure the support of Democratic primary voters worried about beating the incumbent.
Biden and Trump are two of the three candidates most likely to be inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2025. The third is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) who, despite a rocky week or two, still retains the second-most support in Republican primary polling. This would seem to be an enviable position for a candidate, given Biden’s not-great approval ratings and Trump’s ongoing unfavorability with the public.
But DeSantis, eager to peel hard-right Republican primary voters away from Trump, has gone out of his way to leverage his executive position to build up a partisan track record. He’s not going to be able to arrive in a general election as a blank-slate candidate like Trump or Obama; he won’t be able to position himself as a moderate. That push is probably why he’s in second place — but it hasn’t actually propelled him past Trump.
It’s true that DeSantis is not currently a candidate for the presidency and he may never be. But it’s fair to draw conclusions about his intentions based on his actions, just as it’s fair to draw conclusions about a guy who dons a balaclava before carrying a large duffel bag into a bank. And if DeSantis does run, his efforts to bolster his position in the primary will probably hurt him in the general.
There’s polling to reinforce this. Last month, YouGov asked Americans how they felt about policy proposals DeSantis had endorsed or signed into law as governor. On 7 of the 8, most Americans viewed the proposals more negatively than positively. On two, both Republicans and people who said they preferred DeSantis in a hypothetical primary contest viewed the policies more negatively than positively.
And that was before DeSantis’s strange feud with Disney — rooted in the company publicly opposing a controversial proposal endorsed by the governor — escalated to the point that the popular company filed suit against him. In YouGov’s most recent favorability polling, about as many Americans say they view DeSantis very unfavorably as very favorably. Eight in 10 said they knew enough about him to have an opinion — again, even before he’s declared his candidacy.
It’s not necessarily the case that a candidate needs to be more moderate to win. The American National Election Studies poll has tracked views of major-party candidates since 1972.
In every election since 1976, a larger percentage of the electorate has viewed the Democrat as moderate than the Republican. If we subtract the percentage describing each candidate as moderate from the percentage saying the candidates are extreme, the Democrats were viewed as more moderate on net in 10 of 13 contests. Only about half the time, including 2020, did the candidate viewed as more moderate on net earn more popular votes.
(Notice that George W. Bush, Obama and Trump were all seen as more extreme in their reelection bids than when they were first elected. Notice, too, that Trump was viewed as more extreme than moderate — but a larger percentage of voters identified him as moderate than any Republican since 1976.)
But what’s the value proposition for DeSantis’s hard-right policies in a general election? Both the 2018 and 2022 elections showed Republicans underperforming when Trump isn’t on the ballot; it seems safe to assume that DeSantis winning the Republican nomination would result in some Trump voters deciding to stay home. At the same time, voters asked to choose between Biden and DeSantis might very well be likely to judge DeSantis to be as extreme as Trump.
Had DeSantis been less-aggressive in embracing right-wing culture-war fights in his effort to leapfrog Trump, he might be able to run a blank-slate candidacy that held broader appeal for general-election voters.
That opportunity is now gone.