Oddly on looking through the actual poll I don't think it's that bad of a result for DeSantis. It's a poll of US adults (which are always to the left of likely/registered voters), and four of the eight policies tested have the 'intended' position under 50% with not-huge margins; several of these use phrasing that sort of presupposes the anti-DeSantis position (ie, the 'diversity equity inclusion' construction or 'for content the government deems inappropriate'). The remaining three are also flawed questions in various ways (the gun rights question, considering normal error on gun rights referendums, probably is popular -- background checks that are in the 80s in polling often fail, much less 60s; on abortion I know the FLGOP is considering a 6-week ban but the state has so far stuck to 15 weeks, and the current legislation has proponents and detractors).
He could have just run as a competent, no-drama conservative governor who’s pushed back against “woke” overreach. Instead he’s decided to become a deranged fascist obsessed with the fringes of the culture war. Who the hell is advising this guy?
He'd still have the election results in Florida. OTOH I question how much Republican Governors not interested in the 'culture war' (here meaning the questions listed in this poll) even are a thing at all, outside of Phil Scott -- even those in relatively left-leaning states, like Youngkin and Sununu, have put substantial emphasis on educational reform (here meaning giving more powers to parents, who are presumed to be a conservative demographic).
Trump is facing multiple indictments, DeSantis is weird and won't get the blessing of Trump if he wins, literally just need Biden to stay healthy and unemployment under 4% and it'll be a second term
No Republican candidate has ever lost a general because they failed to get Trump's blessing; after the 2016 cycle there aren't even any underperformances that can be clearly linked to Trump's opposition. Part of the story of DeSantis (and similar campaigns in 2022 like DeWine's, who was actually significantly more old-school socially conservative) is in fact that even muted conflict with Trump gets you an enormous boost among swing voters, regardless of how right-wing your actual agenda has been, without causing any backlash at all among Trump's base.
It's not about getting Trump's blessing, it's the fact that when Trump loses an election, he says it was rigged. He did it in 2020, and would have done it in 2016 if he had lost the primary or general, he said so himself that he could only lose if it was rigged. So if he loses to DeSantis he'll cry fraud and fracture the party, possibly depressing Republican turnout like he did for the GA runoffs
