The Horse Race: Has Vivek's Moment Arrived?

with Brittany Bernstein

Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Vivek Ramaswamy's efforts to distinguish himself from his older, more rehearsed, and more experienced establishment opponents appear to be working.

A new Rasmussen poll found Ramaswamy garnering 13 percent support among likely Republican primary voters, placing him in a distant second place behind former president Donald Trump, who led the pack with 60 percent. Like all polls conducted before the primary candidates take the stage for the first debate, the Rasmussen poll should be taken with a grain of salt, but it's nevertheless noteworthy that Ramaswamy has risen from relative obscurity as a biotech entrepreneur and author to something approaching a household name as a presidential candidate, outpacing a former secretary of state in Nikki Haley and a sitting senator in Tim Scott.

Cook Political Report publisher and editor Amy Walter said this week that the entrepreneur "comes up a lot" in focus groups "because he's just so different from the other candidates."

"He has not cut a traditional political profile," she added.

Interest in Ramaswamy is undeniable: a RealClearPolitics polling average has Ramaswamy in third place with 6.6 percent support, behind Trump (54.3. percent) and DeSantis (14.4 percent). It seems clear at this stage that he's not going to be the nominee, but if he reaches 10 percent in the early-primary states, it could spell disaster for DeSantis, who needs all the non-Trump votes he can get.