Blog: Fervor Over Favorability: The Poll Numbers That Hoodwinked DeSantis
July 22, 2024
The poll numbers showed that Republicans viewed Ron DeSantis more favorably than Donald Trump. The numbers were right, but DeSantis still got crushed. Here’s why.
When Ron DeSantis was deciding whether to run for the Republican nomination for President in 2024, he was riding high on a landslide re-election victory and impressive poll numbers compared to Donald Trump. Our polls here at Victory Insights showed him leading President Trump in Florida at several points throughout 2022 and 2023.
One data point that almost always stuck out (regardless of the pollster) was that DeSantis had higher favorability ratings than Trump. His donors and supporters loved to tout this fact, and DeSantis himself even trumpeted it on a radio interview in a radio interview in July of 2023, saying: “these polls... say I have the highest favorability amongst Republican voters.”
To be clear, he wasn’t wrong. For instance, our November 2022 poll at the height of DeSantis-mania found that 25% more of the GOP base held a positive opinion of DeSantis than of Trump. By April of 2023, that margin had narrowed to 5%. After DeSantis’s official campaign announcement, it jumped to 9%. And even in August, when Trump’s lead in Florida had ballooned to 36%, DeSantis still was viewed favorably by a little over 0.25% more of the Republican electorate than Trump.
So DeSantis was right: his favorability numbers were better than Trump’s, at least at the time. But it begs the question: Why did he still lose?
The quick and dirty explanation is that when voters like several candidates, they vote for the one they love. It didn’t matter that more voters liked DeSantis, since most of them loved Trump. We’ve got the data to prove it.
The chart above tells it all. Those who liked both candidates overwhelmingly sided with Trump. This includes November of 2022, when DeSantis had a double-digit lead over Trump.
The inconvenient truth is that Ron DeSantis does not deserve full blame for his erroneous decision to challenge Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. The real culprit is the out-of-touch donor base that convinced DeSantis that he had a shot to win, influenced by polls showing that voters “really liked” DeSantis.
Let this serve as a warning to future candidates: in a competitive primary election, fervor beats favorability. DeSantis had the favorability, but Trump had the fervor.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 27, 2026 Contact: Victory Insights [email protected] (929) 388-6585 Victory Insights Wins 8 Awards at 2026 Pollies Amelia Island, FL – Last night, the American Association of Political Consultants announced the winners of the 2026 Pollie Awards at their annual conference and awards ceremony. The Pollies recognize exceptional performance and innovations in the political industry and have been dubbed “the Oscars of political advertising” by Esquire Magazine. Victory Insights was well-represented at the event, winning 6 awards directly and participating in 2 other award-winning projects. Most notably, Victory Insights won Gold for “Best Use of Data & Analytics” in both the Campaign Strategy and Fundraising categories. Victory Insights also won Gold for “Best Use of Mobilization Technology,” Silver for “Best Use of Mobile Technology,” and Bronze for “Best Use of AI in Polling” and “Best Use of Phones/SMS.” Victory Insights was also part of the Gold-winning team for the “Best Field/GOTV Series” in the nation. We at Victory Insights are always pushing the envelope of what is possible in the political industry. Our unmatched technologies, service, speed, pricing, and work ethic shine through in everything we do, and we are glad the AAPC has granted us this recognition. We look forward to delivering more innovations and big wins in 2026 and beyond. ###
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 14, 2026 Contact: Victory Insights [email protected] (929) 388-6585 Campaigns & Elections Magazine Names Victory Insights “Most Innovative Startup” Charleston, SC – Last night’s Reed Awards, presented by Campaigns & Election Magazine, recognized the top talents across the political industry. Victory Insights brought home 3 of the most envied awards. First, Victory Insights was named Most Innovative Startup for our launch of the political fundraising and outreach app DonorDex. Then, for the same innovative product launch, we were awarded Best Use of Phones for Fundraising. Finally, we won Best GOTV or Field Campaign for our efforts executing the analytics, outreach, and execution of a massive statewide campaign bus tour. We at Victory Insights are so proud to be named the Most Innovative Startup in the industry and look forward to innovating further. Every award we win is validation that our commitment to relentless innovation is making us the most cutting-edge political firm in the nation. ###
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 23, 2025 Contact: Victory Insights [email protected] (929) 388-6585 Victory Insights Wins 6 Awards at 2025 Pollie Awards Colorado Springs, CO – This week, the political consulting industry gathered in Colorado Springs for the annual Pollie Awards & Conference, hosted by the American Association of Political Consultants. At this event, Victory Insights was honored with 6 awards spanning several product offerings. Most notably, Victory Insights was awarded Gold (1st Place) in the "Best Innovation for Voter Targeting," "Best Use of Polling Research (State)," and "Best Use of Peer to Peer Texting" categories. In addition, Victory Insights was awarded Bronze (3rd Place) in the "Best Use of Polling Research (Ballot Initiative)," "Best Telephone Town Hall," and "Best Use of New Digital Technology" categories. These awards are the result of many years of innovation by the Victory Insights team. Our proprietary technologies, utilized both in our polling and in our campaign services, are the industry standard. We will remain on the cutting edge of the political industry as we continue to work on the most advanced technologies in polling, outreach, and beyond. ###
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 24, 2025 Contact: Victory Insights [email protected] (929) 388-6585 Victory Insights Wins "Best Innovation in Survey Research" at 2025 Reed Awards Austin, TX – Last week, the political media outlet Campaigns & Elections hosted the 2025 Reed Awards, dubbed "The Political Campaign Industry Event of the Year," in Austin, Texas. At this event, Victory Insights was presented with the "Best Innovation in Survey Research" award. Our firm was honored with this prestigious award in honor of our innovative Poll Dashboard, which has revolutionized the way poll results are presented to clients. Using an interactive dashboard and a conversational AI agent with deep knowledge of the poll results, Poll Dashboard represents the first major rethinking of survey deliverables in the industry's century-long history. Poll Dashboard was rolled out to a select number of clients in 2024 and is already being deployed in a more extensive fashion in 2025. Furthermore, Poll Dashboard is constantly being improved upon, and is only one of many cutting-edge internal tools developed by Victory Insights. We were founded with the promise of spurring innovation in the slow-to-innovate political polling industry, and this award is proof that we're delivering on that promise. ###
We expect Michael Way to finish in the top two in the Republican Primary for Arizona’s 15th State House district, thus winning one of the two GOP nominations.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 25, 2024 Contact: Victory Insights [email protected] (929) 388-6585 Victory Insights Wins "Best Use of Data Analytics and Machine Learning" at the 2024 Pollie Awards Washington, DC – Last week, the American Association of Political Consultants hosted the 2024 Pollie Awards in Washington, DC. At this event, Victory Insights was awarded 1st place in the "Best Use of Data Analytics and Machine Learning" category. Our firm was honored with this prestigious award as a result of our groundbreaking campaign data management software, called Campaign Dashboard. Throughout the 2023 election cycle, Campaign Dashboard was used in dozens of campaigns to synthesize regular voter data with up-to-date on-the-ground data from polls, web forms, door-to-door campaigning, and more. Additionally, our software provides users with integrated AI chat functionality to pull outreach lists, analyze data, and receive campaign strategy recommendations driven by machine learning. Innovation is at the heart of everything we do. We were founded with the intention of shaking up the political polling industry, and that's exactly what we've done. We look forward to continuing to innovate how data is collected, analyzed, and utilized in the political industry. ###
General elections are frequently discussed, but rarely understood. Commentary about general election outcomes often resorts to pointing fingers and saying “I told you so,” instead of focusing on available data and objective facts. We believe that the largest contributing factor to this unfortunate phenomenon is the lack of a data-driven model capable of explaining general election outcomes. For this reason, we’ve developed such a model. This model can be expressed in two different ways: (1) qualitatively in a three-layer model for abstract discussion, and (2) formulaically for precise calculations. Let’s start with the qualitative three-layer model. As shown in the diagram below, the base of this model is Voter Registration, followed by Turnout, and finally topped with Support.
In mid-May of this year, Florida politicos on both sides of the aisle turned their attention towards Duval County, where the race for Jacksonville Mayor was coming down to the wire. Despite the fact that Democrats made up 4.3% more of the registered voter base than Republicans in Jacksonville, Republican turnout exceeded Democratic turnout by 3.2% by the end of Election Day. With turnout numbers tilted in their favor, Republicans were hopeful that their nominee, Daniel Davis, would come out victorious. That didn’t happen. Instead, Democrat Donna Deegan won with 52.1% of the vote, besting Davis’s 47.9%. Despite strong Republican turnout – bolstered by the Florida GOP’s get-out-the-vote efforts – the Republican candidate had lost, and many on the right were left scratching their heads and asking, “What went wrong?” In this article, we’ll be answering that question through the lens of the Victory Formula, a model developed by our team for the purpose of understanding general election outcomes. If you’d like to take a deeper dive into this formula, you can read this article explaining how it works. But for our purposes today, all you need to know is that the formula takes in nine variables (three about voter registration, three about turnout, and three about support for each candidate), and produces the exact margin by which a Republican candidate wins (or loses) a head-to-head general election. Since the election in Jacksonville has already happened, we were lucky enough to have exact final numbers for voter registration and turnout, meaning all that’s left for us to understand is the layer we refer to as “support.” This layer has three simple variables: Republican loyalty, Democratic loyalty, and nonpartisan loyalty. Republican loyalty refers to the percentage of Republican turnout that resulted in votes for the Republican candidate. For instance, if 100 Republicans voted in the election, but only 75 of them voted for the Republican candidate, then Republican loyalty would be 75%. Democratic loyalty refers to the same concept, just on the Democratic side. And finally, nonpartisan loyalty simply refers to the percentage of the nonpartisan/third-party that went to the Republican candidate. None of these variables can be found in the election result data. Instead, we must use the Victory Formula to make inferences about their values, and from there, draw conclusions about why the race ended up the way it did. But there’s an issue: with three unknown variables, there are many different combinations that could result in Deegan’s 4.2-point victory. In fact, these potential “solutions” can be mapped out on a three-dimensional surface:
Data analysis always helps – even on the School Board It’s not just political polling that benefits from rigorous data analysis. This past week, our firm was tapped to do some impromptu data analysis to check if a Collier County, FL School Board member’s claim was accurate. It turns out, it wasn’t – and we had the receipts to prove it. In November of 2022, Collier County elected an all-new conservative majority to their School Board, and the county’s superintendent “stepped away” from the job not long after. The ensuing process to hire a new superintendent was contentious, but eventually the Board decided on Dr. Leslie Ricciardelli, a longtime Collier County educator, and the next step was to iron out a contract. There were two schools of thought on the matter. One wing of the Board supported Dr. Ricciardelli’s request to be paid $305,000 per year. The other wing wanted to offer a lower salary, as that’s what was advertised in the job posting. At a public School Board meeting, conservative activist Rachael Schaaf questioned whether this $305,000 salary was a responsible use of taxpayer money. In response, School Board member Stephanie Lucarelli – the most outspoken proponent of the salary increase – argued that $305,000 was “in line with other superintendents across the state.” It is this statement that we were tasked with fact-checking. To do so, we collected data on superintendents’ salaries from every county in the state of Florida, as well as each county’s total student enrollment. We plotted this data in the chart below, and with the help of a trusty trendline, we clearly showed that the proposed $305,000 salary was out of line with counties with similar enrollments.
The belief has long been held that, in order for a candidate to win an election, they must be popular. After all, it makes sense: who would vote for someone they don’t like? While this age-old belief isn’t entirely false, the reality is far more nuanced, and varies greatly depending on whether we’re talking about primary elections versus general elections, crowded fields versus head-to-head matchups, and small-town races versus big-money slugfests. Let’s work through several different scenarios in order to unpack this. If you’re the only candidate with a sizeable campaign war chest in a race against unsophisticated competitors, then yes, your spending should primarily be aimed at gaining popularity and building Name ID. Your popularity alone will likely be enough for you to sail across the finish line in first place. However, what if it’s a crowded Republican primary in which several candidates are well-funded? Now, things are different. In this scenario, it’s unlikely that any one candidate will win more than 50% of the vote, so you’re no longer seeking a majority – only a plurality. In this case, even if a majority of voters like you, what good does that do? It’s not enough voter voters to like you. They need to like you more than your competitors. Let’s use a real-world example here. In both our Florida and Iowa polls regarding the 2024 Republican presidential primary, more GOP voters had a positive opinion of Ron DeSantis than of Donald Trump. Put simply, DeSantis was more “popular” than Trump. Nevertheless, Trump annihilated DeSantis in head-to-head matchups, winning by 15% in Florida and 19% in Iowa. The moral of the story here is that, in such a situation, it’s not about whether or not people like you, it’s about whether they support you more strongly than they support your opponent. Building such support inherently requires taking risks. If you only make wishy-washy statements designed to appease everyone, and your competitor makes bold statements that strike a chord in the hearts of voters, the voters will choose your competitor over you nine times out of ten. They very well may like you, but they won’t like you enough to vote for you over your competitor. Of course, most elections aren’t crowded primaries between sophisticated and well-funded campaigns. Most are simple, and can be won by hitting base hits, not home runs. Nevertheless, it’s crucial to know the difference, and how this difference affects your strategy. To round out this discussion, let’s refocus our discussion on general elections. Once you’ve made it out of the primary and are now facing a Democrat, the election becomes much more about popularity. General elections are, in most cases, a head-to-head race. Thus, whoever can win over 50% of voters plus one wins the race. Of course, the ease of accomplishing this varies greatly depending on the district. If 70% of likely voters in your district are Republicans, it’s much easier for you to win than in a district where only 35% are Republicans. But regardless of the partisan makeup of your district, the general axiom remains true: the more popular candidate wins. And in many districts, that means winning over nonpartisan and third-party voters, which requires you to conduct targeted outreach and fine-tune your messaging. (Hint: if you’re in a purple district, the “Top Issues” page on your website should shift closer to the center of the political spectrum during the general election.) In summary, although popularity is a key factor in most elections, it’s certainly not the end of the story. In many cases, intensity of support is more important than breadth of support. Your strategy should take into account the makeup of the electorate, your competitors, and the type of election. Best of luck!
