County GOP chairs interested in DeSantis, less so Trump

The results of my first round of county party chairs surveys

Today Politico is running the first results from a survey of Republican county party chairs I did in February. I’ll have more to say about the survey but hope you’ll check out the piece here.

Quick summary: I surveyed 187 Republican county chairs to learn about their preferences in the presidential nomination contest so far. Among the questions I asked them was whom they were considering supporting for the GOP presidential nomination. They could name as many as they wanted. 73% of them said DeSantis, but just 43% said they're considering Trump.

Then I asked whom they definitely don't want to see the GOP nominate for president. 4 in 10 said they don't want their party to nominate Trump. Fewer than 1 in 10 said they don't want DeSantis. I talk about how we might interpret this in the Politico piece.

I will be running followup surveys throughout this year and into early 2024 to see how things shift. And I'll be posting the main findings at Politico, and digging some more into the details here.

(My thanks to Ben Weyl and Catherine Kim for all their work in putting this piece together.)