This week, a poll conducted by Morning Consult about the 2024 Republican presidential field put Donald Trump at nearly 50 percent support with likely GOP primary voters, ahead of presumed rival Ron DeSantis by double digits. Former vice president Mike Pence sits at a meager 7 percent, while former South Carolina governor and Trump appointee Nikki Haley — expected to launch her presidential bid later this month — barely scored outside the margin of error.

Given the renewed animus toward Trump currently emanating from the GOP establishment, it’s easy to imagine various GOP candidacies materializing over the next few months beyond those that currently look likely. If he does run, DeSantis can be expected to pitch himself to Republican elites and primary voters as some kind of compromise candidate, an ersatz substitute for Trump himself all too happy to play to the esoteric concerns of the GOP base without the political baggage. Liz Cheney (incidentally at 2 percent in this week’s Morning Consult poll) could enter the fray and would probably be more popular among Democrats than those whose votes she would actually be courting.

While he doesn’t actually appear in the recent polling, it’s also easy to imagine a figure like Josh Hawley trying to peddle a right-wing version of Elizabeth Warren–ism and fusing a populist posture with more media-friendly appeals to policy wonkery. John Bolton, whose stated intention to run has so far been greeted with a mixture of indifference and ridicule, would probably do so on a single issue: the necessity of total war with Iran.