The GOP Primary Field Is Growing Fast

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast gets ready for a big week in politics!

For starters, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott officially kicked off his presidential campaign in North Charleston on Monday morning. He’s starting the race in the low single digits in national polls, but he has a lot of campaign cash and plenty of goodwill amongst Republican lawmakers, donors and media. So will he be able to convert that potential energy into something more kinetic in the polls?

We also expect the long-teased Ron DeSantis presidential campaign to become a reality this week. According to reports, he could make it official as soon as Wednesday. Trump’s lead over the Florida governor, according to our polling averages, has doubled from 15 to 30 percentage points over the past few months. So will making it official give DeSantis the momentum to turn it around?

And according to the Treasury Department, we are just a week or so away from a possible default on the nation’s debt. President Biden is back from the G7 summit in Japan and he and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy kicked off new negotiations on Monday. So what are the sticking points and what do Americans want?

Meg Kinnard, a national politics reporter at the Associated Press, and David Byler, data columnist at the Washington Post, join the crew to weigh in.

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