Sarah Longwell, a Republican political strategist, said on Sunday that support for 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is dwindling in such a way that conservative focus groups are no longer mentioning the Florida governor’s name.
DeSantis was long viewed as the GOP’s best chance at overcoming former President Donald Trump in the 2024 election. However, support for DeSantis has faltered in recent weeks. Critics of the governor have bashed his handling of Florida’s insurance crisis, while others have said that DeSantis is placing too much focus on culture wars instead of producing a strong economic plan.
According to Longwell, the proof of DeSantis’s faltering campaign is evident considering he is no longer being mentioned in conservative focus groups.
“I have to tell you, he has been getting killed in the focus groups and it’s not even that kind of criticism. We always ask people who do you want to see be the 2024 nominee? And six months ago, Ron DeSantis, he would always come up. He was the first one. If it wasn’t Trump, it was him,” she said during an appearance on CNN‘s Inside Politics on Sunday. “People don’t even mention him right now.”
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Longwell explained that two focus groups in a row failed to even mention DeSantis.
“They’ve said [Senator] Tim Scott, they’ve said Vivek Ramaswamy and he’s just not even getting mentioned—there was one guy who liked him…That is brutal,” Longwell said.
Newsweek reached out to DeSantis’s campaign through an online request form for comment.
It is the most recent bit of bad news to hit DeSantis’s campaign in the past few weeks. Last month, DeSantis announced layoffs that eliminated more than one-third of his campaign staff. Last week, the Florida governor conducted a slew of campaign events throughout Iowa and was met with many empty seats at a meet-and-greet. He also encountered hecklers who chanted “Go back to Florida!” during a talk with Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds at an event in Des Moines on Saturday.
In addition, DeSantis was greeted by a banner flying over the Iowa State Fair that read, “Be likeable Ron!” before he was set to give a speech on Saturday.
DeSantis is floundering in some polls, as well. Until recently, DeSantis placed second in the polls—still far behind Trump, but the Florida governor boasted a strong lead over other GOP candidates. However, Newsweek reported that a top Republican poll on Thursday revealed that DeSantis slipped to third place in the GOP presidential primary behind Ramaswamy.
Republican-leaning pollster Cygnal—which holds an “A” rating with poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight—found that DeSantis is now preferred by 10 percent of the electorate after surveying 2,000 people nationwide. Ramaswamy had edged into second place at 11 percent. Trump held strong with 53 percent of the electorate preferring him as the GOP candidate.
A spokesperson for DeSantis’s campaign previously told Newsweek that the GOP primary remained a “two-man race” between DeSantis and the former president.
“Governor DeSantis is the only candidate in the race who can beat Joe Biden and implement the agenda we need to reverse this country’s decline and revive its future,” the spokesperson said.
