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Ron DeSantis makes a lot of political hay from telling his state’s college professors what they can and cannot teach.
Polling now suggests that it’s the Florida Governor who should go back to school.
A YouGov survey has found that the policies that make DeSantis a champion of the anti-woke agenda in Florida would hurt his chances among voters across the nation as a whole.
When asked, they gave seven out of eight of DeSantis’ policies a big thumbs down.
DeSantis has not announced it, but all the signs indicate he’ll challenge former president Donald Trump and others for the Republican Party’s nomination in next year’s presidential contest.
William Frey, an expert on elections at the Brookings Institution think tank, told Reuters that a candidate running on DeSantis’ platform in a general election would mean ‘Democrats are going to have an advantage.’
DeSantis’s signature policies were graded in a poll of US adults, who said whether they supported or opposed the governor’s best-known initiatives
Members and supporters of the LGBTQ community rally in Miami Beach, Florida, against Gov Ron DeSantis’efforts to crack down on gender and sexual identity lessons in schools
For the survey, pollsters quizzed 1,582 adults across the US on eight of DeSantis’s signature policies and recorded who supported the idea and who was opposed.
The results showed that only one policy had more supporters than opponents — banning trans male-to-female athletes from playing on women’s and girls’ teams at Florida public schools.
DeSantis signed the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act in June 2021.
The other seven policies all got a thumbs down from the respondents — more people opposed the idea than did support it.
Among them was Florida’s so-called ‘curriculum transparency’ rule, which makes it necessary for the books available to children in the libraries of public schools to be reviewed by a specialist.
They are then meant to weed out inappropriate content, such as the controversial graphic novel Gender Queer, which is popular among some teachers and students for its portrayal of the emotional lives of adolescents.
But critics say its illustrated depictions of LGBTQ sex are tantamount to pornography.
While more than a third of respondents supported public school book reviews, nearly half were opposed — meaning DeSantis would lose votes if it were part of his platform in a face-off with a Democratic candidate in 2024.
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The rest of his policies also tank with the voters, according to YouGov polling conducted from March 16 to 20.
Overall, they rejected bans on schools and businesses from imposing Covid-19 mask and vaccine rules, and from public universities from teaching Critical Race Theory and radical gender ideology.
Likewise, respondents were not keen on DeSantis policies on banning abortions after six weeks, banning so-called Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) schemes in colleges, and giving politicians the power to sack tenured professors at public colleges.
Gov DeSantis’ policies on restricting books in schools and other culture wars issues win votes in Florida but could hurt him in a nationwide contest
A person wearing a mouse costume holds a Gov Ron DeSantis poster stands at a rally of Florida Republicans
YouGov’s respondents gave seven out of eight of DeSantis’ policies a thumbs down
DeSantis least popular policy involves firearms. By a wide margin of 55 percent to 21 percent, Americans don’t want to let people carry concealed weapons without a license or safety training.
DeSantis has become the GOP’s most prominent player in the nation’s ‘culture wars’ since becoming governor in 2019. During the Covid-19 outbreak, he noisily resisted mask and vaccine mandates.
The governor, who won reelection in November by about 19 percentage points, has defended his approach to government as being focused on delivering campaign promises to Floridians, rather than getting a bump in the polls.
Should DeSantis run for the White House, his positions on abortion and guns would likely help win votes in Republican primaries in the early months of 2024. But they may hurt him with the independents and moderates he would need to win a general election.
Equally, if DeSantis fends off Trump and others in the GOP primary, he would likely pivot to the center and reframe his most divisive policies about abortions, guns, race and LGBTQ rights on more ‘family-friendly’ terms.
As it stands, DeSantis trails Trump 39 percent to 47 percent in a one-on-one primary matchup among registered voters who are Republicans or Republican-leaning independents.
That’s down from his 45 percent to 41 percent lead over the former president in early February.
When the field is opened up to include other candidates, such as former vice president Mike Pence and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, DeSantis polling chances tank even further.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
