By Michaela Galligan 
Photo Credit: AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell
Campaigns for the 2024 election cycle are well underway, and one that has garnered a lot of attention is the Republican presidential primary election. Since August, 15 candidates have been vying for Republican party voters to elect them as the Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential election through debates, media coverage, and more. With a recent third debate, and a shrinking pool of candidates, there appears to be three front-runners in the polls: Former President Trump, Governor DeSantis, and Ambassador Haley.
Former President Donald Trump filed paperwork to run for his second term in 2024 on November 15, 2022. Former Governor of South Carolina and former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, was the next major candidate to file to run in the Republican primary, announcing and filing her campaign on February 14, 2023. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis filed and announced his anticipated campaign on May 24, 2023.
Since before the election season officially began, President Trump has been polling in the top spot with a majority of Republican support, but ongoing trials have led many election specialists to believe legal disputes will cause chaos within the campaign. William Howell, an American Politics professor at the University of Chicago, recently stated “the indictments are going to hurt [Trump] slightly.” Legal attempts to remove Trump from the ballot are underway, such as those in Michigan and Colorado, though these attempts have, so far, proved unsuccessful. All of this controversy has coincided with a shift in public sentiment that has been steadily occurring with candidates Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley gaining attention as the Iowa Caucus nears.
The DeSantis campaign had been anticipated by voters and analysts alike, as many believe his work as Florida governor has been in preparation for a presidential election. Election analysts from PBS stated “DeSantis’ entry into the Republican field has been rumored for months and he is considered one of the party’s strongest candidates in the quest to retake the White House from Democratic President Joe Biden.” DeSantis has been polling behind Trump since he officially announced his campaign. While his popularity in the polls has gone down since debates started, DeSantis has still been able to maintain a steady lead over the other Republican candidates by around 10 points, depending on the poll, that is until Nikki Haley’s campaign experienced a rise in popularity after the first debate on August 23, 2023.
The Haley campaign was not greatly considered by much of the Republican party when first announced, as she was polling at just 1% of Republicans’ preferred candidate, until the first Republican primary debate. According to The New Yorker, Haley’s strategy of appealing to more moderate Republicans and moving past the era of Donald Trump has intrigued citizens across the country, and there are indicators that this strategy has worked as Haley has been rising in the polls at a consistent rate and is now polling very close to DeSantis at within three points, rivaling him to take the second place spot in the race.
Before the third Republican debate on November 8, Nikki Haley’s campaign team released a video ad that aired on multiple platforms and channels on November 7 bashing competitor Ron DeSantis. The ad targets DeSantis for being untruthful in recent debates, and calling him out for going back on previous statements. The ad showed a clip from a previous Republican debate wherein Haley said DeSantis is “against fracking, anti-drilling” and DeSantis claimed that her statement was “not true.” The conclusion of the ad included a video of a Florida citizen asking DeSantis about his stance on a fracking ban, to which DeSantis responded that he supports one. In his time as Florida governor DeSantis issued an anti-fracking and offshore drilling executive order for the state.
DeSantis gave no immediate address to the advertisement. During the third debate, DeSantis called Haley out on her past leniency with China, saying “she welcomed them into South Carolina, gave them land near a military base” and “wrote the Chinese ambassador a love letter saying what a great friend they were.” DeSantis’ statements seem to be referring to actions Haley took when working with a Chinese company to locate in South Carolina when she was governor.
Later in the debate, when asked about energy exploration, Haley circled back to calling DeSantis out on his anti-fracking policies in Florida just like in the ad released the day before. She claimed that DeSantis is “a liberal” on the policy, saying “you always have been. Just own it if that’s the case, but don’t keep saying you’re something that you’re not.”
Shortly after the debate, Haley’s team announced that they would be spending 10 million dollars on an advertisement campaign focused on Ron DeSantis for Iowa and New Hampshire. The DeSantis campaign reported 5 million dollars available to spend on the primary for the rest of the year, meaning that Haley will have a financial advantage when it comes to campaign resources allocated to advertising.
Haley’s campaign manager, Betsy Ankney commented on the financial differences within the two campaigns by saying, “Nikki Haley’s momentum and path to victory are clear. The same can’t be said for Ron DeSantis, who, even with a decent showing in Iowa, can’t afford a cup of coffee at the Red Arrow diner in New Hampshire and is a mere tourist in South Carolina.” Andrew Romeo, spokesperson for the DeSantis campaign, responded to this announcement saying “as Americans look behind the curtain, they will see [Haley] does not have the extensive record of conservative achievements that Ron DeSantis boasts.”
The first Republican caucus is in Iowa on March 15, 2024, which will provide an important benchmark on the battle for the Republican Presidential nomination. The Iowa caucus is considered to be crucial to campaigns as it is the first opportunity for voters to give an indication as to who they want to be their party’s nominee.