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I'm just going to throw out personal experiences and anecdata right here. I'm a lifelong Republican, living in a purple region of a purple state. I've been campaigning for friends in the primary election coming up for local campaigns, knocking on doors and going to events. I've spoken to somewhere around 500 likely Republican and 200 Democratic primary voters in the past two months. This is what I'm seeing...
-- The Rs are very much split between die-hard down-with-the-ship MAGA who will not vote against Trump, embarrassed Republicans who barely want to be Rs any more but are kinda stuck, and R registered voters whose knowledge of these issues is so shallow and uninvolved that they're not predictably committed to any ideology. The political equivalents of Pentecostals, Episcopalians, and Christmas-Easter Catholics; one group passionate and moronic, one group that treats what should be a whole-life commitment as a social club that they really only stay in because it already exists, and one group that doesn't really know what they believe but they're pretty sure they'll believe the hell out of it when they get around to it. I would guess the MAGA has the slim plurality, but not a strong enough one to be certain of victory depending how the Christmas-Easter contingent breaks.
-- There are really smart and interesting Trump supporters in the world, including a good number on this website, but his base is the Lumpen-Proletariat. The downscale end of the Republican party is where Trump gets yardage against Desantis. Desantis can carry the McMansion Suburbs that Biden did better with than HRC, but Trump dominates the houses with an old car parked on the lawn.
-- School board fights are vicious around here where they used to be staid. In my two local school districts, there are cross-party slates of people violently worked up about Trans Issues, opposing a group of Covidiots who would probably still have schools closed if they had their druthers. There are going to be vastly more schoolboard fights across the country this year, I predict school CW will dominate early primary headlines as they win some elections and implement new policies. Things are going to get much worse on that front, especially because the sole actual policy that seems universal is that all school board business should be operated by livestream. So (no offense to present company) assholes on the internet from Ireland to Russia to Canada to Missouri are going be able to tune into my small town schoolboard to criticize and look for something to turn into CW fuel? It's going to be a bloodbath.
-- Democrats are in a pissy mood. Even in very local races, where we're not CWing or really doing anything to do with national politics, nice old ladies would scream at me that they're never voting for any Republican ever again. This correlated strongly in a neighborhood with knocking on R neighbors' doors and getting a hard MAGA type. I'm not sure there's really any traction to crossing the aisle unless the R candidate renounces Trump. Desantis will not draw significant Democrat votes unless he personally renounces Trump/J6/etc. He will not be able to walk the line between the two, Trump must be slain before any moderate Reagan Republican run is possible.
I'm not sure where all that leaves your Desantis theories, and it's all just anecdotes collected by me personally (a white guy in a blazer or a patagucci vest depending on weather) knocking on doors and getting responses. But R candidates ignore it at their own peril.
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