Since his official entry into the 2024 presidential race in May, Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been sitting on the outside looking in as he has fought to eat away at the commanding lead former President Donald Trump has had in polls.
With a little more than seven months until the New Hampshire primary, DeSantis might need to start worrying less about how he's going to defeat Trump and more about how he plans to hold on to second place.
DeSantis' numbers have remained stagnant or fallen nationally in recent polls against a number of new arrivals to the campaign, some of whom have run to the left of him and Trump as the two Floridians battle to inherit the MAGA base that propelled Trump to the White House in 2016.
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a longshot for the GOP nomination, has seen his approval numbers soar among prospective voters in the early battleground state of New Hampshire at the same time DeSantis experienced a sharp drop in approval.
Others, like dark horse candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, have begun demonstrating momentum in battleground state polls and national surveys that have divided the field of Trump's challengers even further as the former president remains the clear leader of the Republican field—a fact DeSantis' own advisers have begun owning up to.
"Right now in national polling we are way behind, I'll be the first to admit that," Steve Cortes, a former Trump adviser working with the DeSantis campaign, said Sunday during a livestreamed Twitter event discussing the race.
While some polls show improvement for DeSantis—a recent Marquette University poll showed DeSantis as a 16-point favorite in a hypothetical head-to-head contest against the former president—others show DeSantis' national brand has largely failed to improve among Republican primary voters and independents as his campaign has built a national presence.
A June survey of 1,020 registered voters by Echelon Insights showed little movement in DeSantis' favorability rating among Republican voters nationally while his unfavorability rating among independents increased three points from the previous month. Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, meanwhile, saw a nine percent increase in his favorability among Republican voters during the same period, while Ramaswamy's increased by a whopping 15 percent nationally.
That performance likely transfers to votes as well. With all Republican primary candidates considered, Echelon polling showed DeSantis' support fell from 19 percent nationwide in the group's May poll to 16 in its June poll, while Trump remained steady, even after two criminal indictments.
Other polls show DeSantis performing relatively well against Trump. Reached for comment, a spokesperson for DeSantis' Never Back Down PAC referred Newsweek to a recent YouGov/Economist survey of 1,359 voters showing DeSantis with a six-point lead over Trump in net favorability among GOP voters, a sign they claimed showed that Trump's attacks on DeSantis were not resonating.
However, while DeSantis' sales pitch to voters has been Trump's inability to win the popular vote in two straight election cycles, the same poll showed a generic Democratic candidate for president leading a generic Republican candidate by three points in a head-to-head 2024 matchup.
Update 07/07/23 5:34 p.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from a DeSantis spokesperson.
