Ron DeSantis 2024 Odds to Win Next US Presidential Election: DeSantis Withdraws Following Iowa Caucuses

Once seen as the future of the Republican party, Ron DeSantis officially ended his campaign on Jan. 21, claiming he foresaw no "clear path to victory."

Few expected to see the Florida governor throw in the towel this early, but his poor results at the Iowa caucuses sealed his fate. "It’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance," he said. "He has my endorsement because we can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear, a repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents.

Let's take a closer look at the current U.S. presidential odds, along with what ultimately went wrong for Ron DeSantis.

Odds to win the 2024 US presidential election

Candidate	Odds to win 2024 US election at	Implied probability
Donald Trump	-188	65.3%
Kamala Harris	+140	41.7%
Michelle Obama	+2,500	3.9%
Hillary Clinton	+3,300	2.9%
Robert Kennedy Jr.	+5,000	2%
JD Vance	+6,600	1.5%
Gavin Newsom	+10,000	1%
Mark Kelly	+15,000	0.7%
Gretchen Whitmer	+20,000	0.5%
Wes Moore	+20,000	0.5%
Josh Shapiro	+20,000	0.5%
Nikki Haley	+20,000	0.5%
John Fetterman	+20,000	0.5%
J.B. Pritzker	+20,000	0.5%
Pete Buttigieg	+20,000	0.5%
Bernie Sanders	+20,000	0.5%
Joe Manchin	+20,000	0.5%
Jamie Dimon	+30,000	0.3%
Elizabeth Warren	+30,000	0.3%
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez	+30,000	0.3%
Josh Hawley	+30,000	0.3%
Oprah Winfrey	+30,000	0.3%
Mark Cuban	<+30,000>	0.3%
John Kerry	<+30,000>	0.3%
Thomas Massie	<+30,000>	0.3%

Odds courtesy of bet365 as of July 24, 2024.

DeSantis' national profile was lacking

Ron DeSantis’s odds of winning the 2024 U.S. presidential election were always extremely low. Despite becoming a darling of Republican voters for his aggressively right-wing cultural issue positions and presiding over a period of sustained economic growth in Florida, DeSantis’ national stature never rose anywhere near his approval level in his home state. Moreover, ordinary GOP voters’ appetite for an alternative to Trump was far less than that of some elected Republican leaders and media elite.

Trump retained a large polling advantage over both DeSantis and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley throughout the early caucuses, and perhaps most devastatingly to DeSantis’s bid, the former president and Palm Beach resident enjoyed a 35-percentage point lead over Florida’s chief executive in both gentlemen’s home state.

DeSantis' cultural conservatism has made him popular with Florida voters

Originally elected as Florida governor by a margin of .4% - representing one of the closest gubernatorial elections in modern American history - over then-Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum in 2018, DeSantis was easily re-elected in 2022 thanks to his popular, uncompromisingly conservative platform in increasingly deep red Florida.

The Ivy League-educated DeSantis has appealed to Florida voters’ populist sentiments in routinely lambasting the so-called "elite" political, media and scientific "establishment." He opposed COVID-19 restrictions, declaring, for example, that Florida would remain "open for business" in issuing an executive order in late 2020 overriding local elected officials’ decisions to shutter establishments during the pandemic.

He has also garnered political support for his "war on woke," signing, among other legislation, a provision precluding the state’s institutions of higher education from using tax dollars to fund diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

He has similarly inveighed against critical race theory - which highlights the institutional racism endemic to American life - and banned any mention of it in Florida public schools, leading education officials across the state to remove offending library books. DeSantis has argued that parental rights are the hallmark of his cultural crusades, a key component of which is an anti-LGBTQ+ agenda.

He championed measures prohibiting any discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in in grade school - a policy that critics label "Don’t Say Gay" - and requiring transgender people to use the public bathroom corresponding to their assigned gender at birth. DeSantis’ cultural conservatism extends to hardline immigration positions and support for a new state law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.

These postures are collectively designed to portray DeSantis as the guardian of Florida’s cultural conservatism against the perceived nationwide dominance of progressivism.

Winning party odds

Party		Implied probability
Republican	-188	65.3%
Democratic	+140	41.7%
Independent	+4,000	2.4%

Odds courtesy of bet365 as of July 24, 2024. 

Campaign flubs and leaked notes hurt DeSantis

Sunshine State voters have rewarded DeSantis’ ideological purity and economic stewardship with a second term and consistently high approval ratings, but the love affair stops at Mar-a-Lago’s edge. After starting 2023 within striking distance of Trump in public opinion polling of Republicans, DeSantis experienced a steady, monotonic decline in support due to repeated campaign flubs, awkwardness, lack of charisma, staff-in-fighting and underwhelming debate performances, as well as Trump’s resurgence despite the former president’s ongoing legal woes.

DeSantis was lampooned when his leaked first Republican primary debate notes explicitly advised him to avoid criticizing Trump, and his subsequent efforts to attack the GOP frontrunner have foundered amid continued adoration for Trump among Republican voters nationwide. Although DeSantis scored the endorsement of Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds and has remained narrowly ahead of his chief anti-Trump rival, Nikki Haley, in the Hawkeye State, Trump’s lead over DeSantis remained nearly 30 percentage points there.

DeSantis didn't gain any traction from his strangely timed debate against California Governor Gavin Newsom, and Trump’s war chest dwarfed "DeSanctimonious" fundraising entering primary season.

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