For this to work, other Republican hopefuls need to sit this one out. It needs to be a two-person primary.
This is precisely the reason why we are seeing these polls being released by low quality establishment Republican hack pollsters like Echelon insights (i.e. Ruffini) as well as other R pollsters like "Neighborhood Research and Media" (the only website I see for them is actually just a facebook page, wtf?) and "Commonwealth Partners" etc.
It is because they have an agenda, and are setting up and releasing these polls for the purpose of trying to promote that agenda and drive the media narrative at the start of the cycle. Their agenda is anti-Trump, because the GOP establishment believes, especially after the R failures in 2022, that Trump is toxic, and doesn't want to be dragged down by him again in 2024.
So for this reason the R establishment has it in for Trump, even more so than they did in 2016 (when they did not really like him but were ultimately prepared to accept him).
Meanwhile, mainstream non-partisan established pollsters like Yougov, Morning Consult, Harvard/Harris, Emerson etc (who were also more accurate in 2022 than all the R hack pollsters) poll a normal primary like they have in previous years with listing multiple candidates, and in those polls, it seems like Trump generally leads a divided field of multiple other candidates, when more options besides just DeSantis are included (and Trump even leads in the Yougov poll when his own son is included as running against him lol).
So it seems to be a pretty different picture, depending on if you believe the R hack pollsters and only poll a 2 person race, or if you believe the non-partisan pollsters and poll a traditional primary as normal, without an agenda.
The Republican establishment know that in 2016, one of the main reasons that Trump won the primary was that the vote was split and he was able to win with pluralities, which built momentum for him and allowed him to eventually consolidate support. So they are trying to set up a narrative right now, at the start of the cycle, that DeSantis and Trump are the only candidates, by only polling DeSantis in 1 v 1 matchups against Trump and ignoring other candidates, hoping to drive all the media attention and hype only to DeSantis and to kill any other candidates in the crib before they can even think about announcing a run.
This is actually a pretty risky strategy on their part however, because if they are successful in making it a 1 v 1 race and DeSantis turns out to be a dud unable to hold up to the scrutiny of a national campaign (and he would certainly not be the first once hyped candidate for which that has turned out to be the case), then there is no backup option, and then they will be stuck with Trump.
