Criss-Crossing the ’24 Campaign Trail, Before the Campaign Is Official

But Mr. Trump’s hold on the core Republican voter base and the Republican National Committee’s new winner-take-all primary rules have kept his most formidable rivals circling the runway, awaiting signals that the turbulence has cleared, said Donna Brazile, who was Al Gore’s presidential campaign manager in 2000.

It was evident on Wednesday in Mr. Scott’s appearance on the Fox News morning show “Fox & Friends,” when Mr. Scott, the only Black Republican senator, was pressed to explain how he would beat Mr. Trump to the nomination.

“If we focus on our uniqueness, we focus on our path to where we are, I believe we give the voters a choice so that they can decide how we move forward,” he answered. “As opposed to trying to have a conversation about how to beat a Republican, I think we’re better off having a conversation about beating Joe Biden.”

In the shadow campaign, meanwhile, the maneuvering goes on. Mr. DeSantis has one clear advantage: a national infrastructure, said Ron Kaufman, a longtime Republican presidential strategist and a confidant of Mitt Romney’s in 2012. Jeff Roe, a former aide to Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, has signed on with Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC, Never Back Down PAC, where he can bring to bear the infrastructure of his multistate firm Axiom Strategies.

But he still needs to declare.

By historical standards, it is still early. The last competitive Republican presidential race came in 2016, and by this time there were two major candidates, Mr. Cruz and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, and Mr. Trump, the eventual nominee, did not declare until June 2015.