Midway through his recent interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Florida governor Ron DeSantis was asked about the flailing state of his presidential campaign. “Some of your supporters are disappointed that your campaign has yet to catch fire the way they would want in terms of polling,” Tapper remarked, going on to cite an analysis by a pollster sympathetic to DeSantis who argues that the Florida governor’s initial appeal as a “Trump without the baggage” has since been compromised by his instinct to swing so hard to the right on social and cultural issues that Republican voters now see him as less electable.

DeSantis’s rather evasive reply — in effect, that he recently won reelection in Florida and national polling doesn’t really matter anyway — only underscores how badly his campaign has performed thus far. Since his campaign’s disastrous and glitchy online launch in May, DeSantis’s numbers have only dropped as he’s become more visible. In overall polling against Trump, he currently trails by an average of more than thirty points, barely faring better in key early states like Iowa and New Hampshire. Having failed to meet fundraising targets, meanwhile, his campaign is already laying off staff, and both major donors and allies like Rupert Murdoch are somewhat audibly having second thoughts.