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President Donald Trump has taken the lead in the Sunshine State, eclipsing the popularity of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) in a new poll conducted by Emerson College.
Per their survey, Trump leads DeSantis with 47 percent of the vote among Florida GOP voters compared to the governor’s 44 percent in a hypothetical 2024 presidential GOP primary race.
The outpouring of Floridian support is a surprising twist, given the fact that DeSantis won his reelection bid in Florida in November 2022 with a staggering 20-point victory over his opponent, former Republican-turned-Democrat, Charlie Crist.
In that same poll, GOP voters indicated that they would give former Vice President Mike Pence 4 percent of support. However, Pence has not officially announced if he will be entering the presidential race in 2024.
Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and former U.N. ambassador, snagged only 2 percent of support in Florida, despite declaring her 2024 candidacy in February 2023.
President Trump has made rapid gains in polling since November 2022. As reported by RSBN, the 45th president recently scored big in Morning Consult’s 2024 GOP Primary Tracker, winning 54 percent of support among GOP voters for the Republican Party presidential nomination in 2024. In that poll, DeSantis scored 26 percent of support.
A recent Yahoo/YouGov poll also found that in a hypothetical 2024 Republican primary, 44 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents would support Trump against DeSantis’s 28 percent. In their survey, Haley netted 5 percent of support and Pence scored 4 percent.
Per RSBN, Premise Data also reflected Trump’s dominance in the nationwide polls, receiving 52 percent of support while DeSantis accrued 26 percent.
Although DeSantis has not officially confirmed any plans to run for president in 2024, he recently told Piers Morgan that he believed that he could beat Joe Biden in a hypothetical presidential race, indicating that he seems to have set his sights on the Oval Office.
