Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally with supporters, in Davenport, Iowa, U.S. March 13, 2023.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Donald Trump is extending his lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who will likely start as the previous president’s top competitor within the 2024 Republican presidential primary if he runs, in keeping with a poll of a possible GOP field released Wednesday.
Quinnipiac University’s latest survey of Republican and Republican-leaning voters found Trump winning 46% of support in a hypothetical GOP primary field, with DeSantis receiving 32%.
That is a welcome change for Trump, who held only a 6-percentage-point lead over DeSantis in Quinnipiac’s February poll of the possible primary field. The ex-president led his possible rival by a 42% to 36% margin on the time.
Asked in the brand new poll who they might support in a head-to-head matchup between Trump and DeSantis, 51% of respondents selected the previous president, versus 40% who picked the governor.
“DeSantis is perhaps the excitement within the GOP conversation, but for now Trump is seeing no erosion and, in actual fact, enjoys a bump in his lead within the Republican primary,” Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy said in a press release.
Quinnipiac’s results from 677 Republican and Republican-leaning voters carried a margin of error of three.8 percentage points.
The brand new poll comes as DeSantis faces intensifying fire from Trump and other presidential contenders as his national profile grows. The Florida governor has not yet announced his widely expected presidential campaign, but has taken several early steps to signal he could launch a bid soon.
At a campaign rally in Iowa on Monday, Trump slammed DeSantis over his record on ethanol, an angle that appeared to fizzle amongst the group of his supporters within the nation’s largest corn-producing state.
Earlier Wednesday, a pro-Trump super PAC announced it was asking a Florida ethics panel to research DeSantis and possibly disqualify him from the ballot if he’s found to have violated state laws.
Meanwhile, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, one other GOP presidential candidate, accused DeSantis of “copying” Trump after he said this week that defending Ukraine against Russia’s invasion was not a “vital” U.S. interest. DeSantis’ remarks even garnered criticism from quite a few Republican senators.
Haley the previous South Carolina governor who launched her presidential bid last month, received 5% of support in Quinnipiac’s latest poll. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who’s considering a White House run, got 3% of the respondents’ support.
Not one of the 11 other candidates within the poll’s hypothetical GOP primary field received greater than 2% of the remaining support.
Among the many 1,635 overall registered voters surveyed in the newest poll, 49% said they might vote for President Joe Biden over Trump if the 2024 election was held today. One other 45% said they might back the previous president over the Democratic incumbent.
Nevertheless, respondents almost perfectly split their support in a hypothetical matchup between Biden and DeSantis. In that possible race, 47% backed the president, while 46% supported the governor.
The questions for the self-identified registered voters had a margin of error of two.4 percentage points.
Biden is predicted to run for reelection, potentially setting him up for a rematch with Trump, who lost in 2020. Quinnipiac found that larger shares of registered voters have negative views than hold positive views of Biden, Trump, DeSantis, Pence and Haley.
