The DeSantis surge that hasn't quite happened
Can Vander Plaats do for DeSantis what he did for Santorum?
As you may recall, Ron DeSantis picked up two important Iowa endorsements last month — those of Gov. Kim Reynolds and evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats. The Vander Plaats one, in particular, is one with a track record; he backed relative long shots Mike Huckabee in 2008 and Rick Santorum in 2012, and both went on to win the Iowa caucuses. So, are we seeing the same magic with DeSantis?
Well, no, not so much. But it’s actually worth talking about.
Below are FiveThirtyEight’s averages for the Republican candidates in Iowa. Now, there haven’t been very many polls in Iowa recently, and only two since the Vander Plaats endorsement. One of those was the recent Seltzer / Des Moines Register survey that showed DeSantis up slightly and Trump up even more. But needless to say, if there’s going to be much of a swing toward DeSantis, we’re really not seeing it so far.
Just what should we be seeing? Here are the RCP polling averages going into the 2012 caucuses. Note the brown line — that’s Santorum. He had a big uptick in the weeks just prior to the caucuses. He was endorsed by Vander Plaats on December 20, 2011.
Actually, let’s do a more apples-to-apples comparison. The chart below compares DeSantis’ 2024 numbers with those of Santorum in 2012. The x-axis is days from the Vander Plaats endorsement.
Probably the most important takeaway here is that it’s hard to detect a Vander Plaats effect in either contest. Santorum was already on the rise when he got the endorsement. There’s a low negative outlier right before the endorsement and a high positive one right after, but looking at the bulk of the polls, it’s not clear that endorsement actually changed much.
And again, there aren’t many polls in the 2024 cycle. You could maybe see DeSantis’ numbers rising, but not by much.
Of course, a major difference between these two contests is that Santorum was able to win the caucuses with just over 24% support, narrowly edging out Mitt Romney. Ron DeSantis’ main competitor is in the high 40s. It’s just hard to see how he gets anything close to that.
So one takeaway is that politics just works differently when Donald Trump is in the mix; even very prominent endorsements really don’t move the needle. The other takeaway is that this endorsement may have been overhyped to begin with.
I think you call Santorum by DeSantis name in graf 3?
From an Iowa poll sponsor:
“Thanks for reading and sharing my your thoughts. Our poll samples independents as well as Republicans as long as they say they plan to caucus. In Iowa, you can change your party registration up until the day of caucuses and even at your caucus location so that you can participate. So, we think it’s valuable to poll those independents as well.”