Florida is the one state where voters have equal substantive knowledge of both candidates. There, a Victory Insights survey of 600 Republican primary voters polled July 13-14 showed DeSantis with 51% of the vote and 33% for Trump. When pressed to say which candidate they leaned toward, it was DeSantis, 61% to 39%. An early July survey of 656 Florida Republicans by Blueprint Polling similarly found DeSantis leading Trump 51% to 39%.

From these numbers, I find it easy to conclude that Ron DeSantis could be a serious competitor for the 2024 Republican nomination. That’s not because Trump has been disqualified by the Jan. 6 hearings. They may have cost him a few general election points, but not as many as he has cost himself.

His continued fixation on relitigating the 2020 election leaves him vulnerable to a DeSantis brimming with critiques of the present and programs for the future. DeSantis, as Dexter Filkins’s perhaps unwillingly positive portrait in the New Yorker indicates, is smart, hard-working, disciplined, and eager to win fights, citing chapter and verse, over hostile media.

He could have an additional advantage. Current polling discourages any other candidate, even former Vice President Mike Pence, from entering the race. In 2016, Trump benefited from split opposition and from a no-hope but persistent John Kasich who siphoned off anti-Trump votes. Can Ron DeSantis win a one-on-one race against Donald Trump? Current polling tells me the answer is, sure he could.