Handicapper Predicts DeSantis To Win Only One State, as Campaign of Florida’s Governor Struggles To Make Headway

After a week of tough headlines for Governor DeSantis’s presidential campaign, one projection shows him struggling to win more than one state in the GOP presidential primary.The handicapper Race for the White House, in its latest projection, reckons that Mr. DeSantis is on track to win but a single state in the primary, Florida.In this scenario, Mr. DeSantis would still receive some delegates for the Republican nomination from states that distribute delegates proportionally. In the estimate of Race for the White House, President Trump would carry 1,774 delegates and Mr. DeSantis would carry 440. A total of 1,234 delegates are needed to win the nomination.The handicapper also maintains a projection for a winnowing field, where every candidate other than Messrs. DeSantis and Trump were to drop out after the Nevada primary in early February.In this scenario, Race for the White House projects that Mr. DeSantis would carry three states, Wisconsin, Tennessee, and Utah, but would actually end with fewer delegates, 397, to Mr. Trump’s 2,060.These projections represent a low point for Mr. DeSantis’s odds of winning the GOP presidential nomination. Those odds were highest at the end of 2022, when the handicapper predicted Mr. DeSantis would win 1,446 delegates to Mr. Trump’s 1,007.In the polls, Mr. Trump is dominating, with FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls showing him at 52 percent support nationally compared to 23.3 percent support for Mr. DeSantis.These projections come as some of Mr. DeSantis’s closest allies — such as the spokesman for the Never Back Down PAC, Steven Cortes — publicly admit that the governor is “way behind” and that Mr. Trump is “the runaway front-runner.”“I’ll be the first to admit that. I believe in being really blunt and really honest,” Mr. Cortes said in a Twitter Spaces event. “It’s an uphill battle, I don’t think is an unwinnable battle, but clearly, Donald Trump is the runaway front-runner, particularly since the indictments.”Mr. Cortes later walked back these comments in a statement to the Hill, saying, “I am convinced that Governor DeSantis will outperform expectations.”Mr. Cortes’s comments come at the end of a week that has been filled with unfavorable headlines for Mr. DeSantis, covering topics from Mr. Cortes’s Twitter Spaces comments to criticism from fellow Republicans calling one of Mr. DeSantis’s campaign videos “homophobic.”In a post, the DeSantis War Room attacked Mr. Trump, saying, “To wrap up ‘Pride Month,’ let’s hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate it.” It reposted a video posted by another Twitter user.The video posted by the DeSantis War Room seems intentionally provocative. It splices clips of Mr. DeSantis alongside highly-memed clips from the film “American Psycho” and images of the “gigachad” meme while appearing to tout news clips describing the governor as “evil” and describing Florida’s “Anti-Trans-Bathroom Bill” as “Draconian.”“Today’s message … is divisive and desperate,” the Log Cabin Republicans said in a statement responding to a post from the DeSantis War Room. “Republicans and other commonsense conservatives know Ron Desantis has alienated swing-state and younger voters.”All the while, analysts at, among other publications, the New York Times or Newsweek have been tallying Mr. DeSantis’s “unforced errors.” A Newsweek headline reads: “Ron DeSantis’ Campaign Is in Deep Trouble.”Despite a week of setbacks and a campaign that appears to face longer odds the longer it goes on, Mr. DeSantis himself has shown no signs of backing down or changing tactics.In an email message to the Times, a spokesman for Mr. DeSantis’s campaign, Bryan Griffin, said the governor has been “underestimated” in every race he’s run in and that the campaign “is a marathon, not a sprint; we will be victorious.”As Mr. DeSantis struggles to make headway in the polls, Mr. Trump has been persistent in his attacks against the governor and lords his polling lead.Despite Mr. DeSantis’s investment in Iowa — his wife, Casey, made a solo appearance in the state on Thursday — Mr. Trump is leading in the state. The former president boasted of his lead in Iowa on Friday afternoon, posting on Truth Social, “I’ll be landing shortly — See you soon Council Bluffs,” and linking to a poll reaffirming his growing lead in the Hawkeye State. The poll, done for American Greatness by National Research Inc., found that Mr. Trump’s lead over Mr. DeSantis expanded to 23 points in early July from 15 points in early June.In an interview with Fox News Thursday night, Mr. DeSantis blamed the “corporate media” for his low poll numbers, saying, “They’re going after me.”“So, I think if you look at all these people that are responsible for a lot of the ills in our society, they’re targeting me as the person they don’t want to see as the candidate,” Mr. DeSantis said. His campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Sun.

Handicapper Predicts DeSantis To Win Only One State, as Campaign of Florida’s Governor Struggles To Make Headway

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