Friday, July 14, 2023

The DeSantis-is-sinking stories may be oversold to some degree, but...

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...
  • Trump either wins Iowa or plays the victim card next January. Does Iowa even matter in 2024? Yeah, the caucuses in the Hawkeye state still matter. All the details at FHQ Plus.
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In Invisible Primary: Visible today...
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There has been a lot of ink spilled in the last week or two about the shape the DeSantis campaign is in a little more than a month since the Florida governor launched his bid for the Republican nomination. Donors are nervous. Deck chairs are being moved. Murdochs are looking elsewhere. Poll numbers are plateauing if not trending downward. And that collective picture could portend an ominous swing into debate season starting next month. Or it could be blip on the radar, a summer lull. Time will tell that tale, but DeSantis remains the clear second option in the current field, albeit not as clear as it may have once been. He continues to bring in money at a pretty good clip. And for some reason he continues to draw in a fair number of endorsements. He may not be best positioned in the race for the 2024 Republican nomination, but he is well positioned even despite the current (real or perceived depending on the metric used) slide.

But here is the thing: DeSantis is now flirting with the threshold for qualifying for delegates that will be used in a lot of states. He is on the wrong side of 20 percent in the latest Morning Consult national poll. No, the Republican nomination process is not a national primary, but not being able to meet delegate qualifying thresholds will kill a campaign quickly once votes begin to be cast. 

...if the ship is not righted. 

There are still six months until the Iowa caucuses and the first few states -- at least as the rules are understood at this point -- have low bars to claim (small shares) of delegates. There is no formal threshold in Iowa, it is set at 10 percent in New Hampshire and Nevada's rules in previous cycles have set the threshold below five percent. But the winner-take-all by congressional district method South Carolina Republicans use is not forgiving and neither are rules in the Super Tuesday states, the majority of which have the maximum 20 percent threshold. 17 percent for DeSantis still puts space between him and the rest of the field, but it is far enough behind Trump right now that the Florida governor is in danger of missing out on delegates when it counts next March and beyond. 

Still, much can happen between now and the voting phase and that could be good or bad for DeSantis.


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Not surprisingly, New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan is giving January 23 a good look for an eventual landing spot for the presidential primary in the Granite state. That has made sense since South Carolina Republicans settled on a February 24 date for their primary, clearing enough space in front of the South Carolina Democratic primary for both Iowa and New Hampshire in January next year. But there is a question that has to be answered first before Scanlan is able to pull the trigger later this fall on that late January date. 


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From around the invisible primary...


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On this date...
...in 1972, South Dakota Senator George McGovern accepted the Democratic presidential nomination in the wee hours of the morning of July 14 in Miami.

...in 2007, former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore dropped out of the race for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. 



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