Despite exiting the race back in January, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ name still appeared on the ballot for his state’s Republican primary Tuesday—though he might now be wishing it hadn’t.
Donald Trump, who DeSantis endorsed after ending his own campaign, unsurprisingly won the Florida primary after already securing his status as the GOP’s 2024 presumptive nominee. But incredibly, DeSantis finished a dismal third, getting fewer votes than Nikki Haley in his own backyard.
The former South Carolina governor—who ended her own bid for the White House earlier this month—got 13.9 percent vote in Florida compared with DeSantis’ paltry 3.7 percent, according to the Associated Press. DeSantis can console himself, however, that he managed to fare slightly better than some of his other erstwhile rivals for the Republican nomination including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (0.8 percent) and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (0.3 percent).
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Trump took all 125 delegates from the primary, his latest victory in the nominating contests that began with the Iowa caucuses which torpedoed DeSantis’ presidential ambitions. The Florida governor dropped out of the race a week later and backed Trump—who has continued mocking DeSantis for having ever stood against him. “I hit him hard, I hit him low,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Ohio over the weekend, adding: “Just like we did to ISIS.”
The former president performed worse in this year’s Florida primary than he did in 2020, taking 81.2 percent of the vote compared with almost 94 percent four years ago. Over 200,000 voters chose to back other candidates in Tuesday’s ballot, while Trump’s victory over President Joe Biden in Florida in 2020 came by a relatively slim margin of under 400,000 votes.
