2023-05-27 08:00:00
A year and a half before the presidential election, the Republican Party is embarking on a campaign for the nomination which will mainly see the former president and the governor of Florida clash.
As the 2024 US presidential election approaches, appetites are already whetting within the Republican Party to establish itself as the opponent of Democrat Joe Biden. His predecessor Donald Trump, who still sees the 2020 election as “faked“, intends to take his revenge. But the former president’s road to the ballot will be strewn with pitfalls. Like Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who declared his candidacy for the primary on Wednesday, May 24, voices are rising within the party to turn the page on the Trump era. Le Figaro summarizes the stakes of this long-distance race for the nomination.
Two favorite candidates in the polls
There is Donald Trump, of course. The former president dreams of replaying the match against Joe Biden, who has announced that he will represent himself. Entangled in legal affairs, weakened by less successful than expected mid-term elections for the party, he declared his candidacy last November. Despite the charges – which he does not hesitate to exploit – he is still the favorite in the polls, with 53% of the votes in the primary in the last made by CNN the 24th from
His biggest competitor broke the (false) suspense on May 24 by declaring his candidacy live on Twitter. Long described as “the rising starof the party, Ron DeSantis was re-elected governor of Florida in 2022 with a 19-point lead over his Democratic rival. He leads a very conservative policy there, not hesitating to go to war against the giant Disney, a major employer in the state, for having publicly denounced a bill restricting the teaching of subjects related to sexual orientation to school. His popularity rating, however, eroded in the weeks before he entered the campaign, DeSantis accumulating behind Trump in the polls (26% in the same CNN study).
Read alsoUnited States: Ron DeSantis, the governor who challenges Donald Trump in the Republican primaries
If the battle should above all resemble a duel between the two personalities, five other candidates have also been declared: former United States ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, political radio host Larry Elder, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy , South Carolina Senator Tim Scott and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson. Others, like former Vice President Mike Pense or Chris Christie, who served as governor of New Jersey, could join the race for the nomination.
Trump already wants to skip the debates
The Republican Party must invest its presidential candidate during its national convention organized from July 15 to 18, 2024 in Milwaukee (Wisconsin), less than four months before the election scheduled for November 5. For this, each state will organize its primary from February 2024, most traditionally taking place in March. If a name stands out along the way, the Republican candidate could be known as early as March, well before Congress officially ratifies his nomination.
But the designation process could be disrupted. Several debates are planned, the first in August in Milwaukee, before a second in California, at the Ronald Reagan presidential library, for which no date has yet been set. And Donald Trump is already threatening to evade his obligations, leaving doubts about his participation in the debates. On his Truth social social network, he wonders why he should go and debate with others when he “leads with a lead that seems impossible to catch».
In 2016, he had already dried up a debate with the other candidates for the nomination of the Republican Party, and had welcomed it, believing that he had obtained “more advertising» than if he had gone there by doing «the front page of all the newspapers“. In 2020, while Donald Trump was running for re-election after his first term, no debate was held.
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