Ron DeSantis led Donald Trump by 23 points in a new poll regarding potential Republican nominees for president in 2024, the Florida governor.
Republican and Republican-leaning voters dealt the significant blow to the former president’s ego in a survey carried out by USA Today and Suffolk University and released on Tuesday.
There was good news for Mr Trump in another poll covering the same time period, by Morning Consult, which gave him an 18-point lead over Mr DeSantis. Furthermore, the polling website FiveThirtyEight still shows the former president in the lead in most surveys.
Nonetheless, David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, told USA Today: “Republicans and conservative independents increasingly want Trumpism without Trump.”
That much has been clear in the rise of Mr DeSantis, a former US military lawyer and hard-right congressman who has pursued distinctly Trumpist hardline, theatrically cruel policies as governor of Florida, in particular on immigration and education.
Last month, Mr DeSantis marked a crushing re-election victory with a confident speech, declaring his state “where woke goes to die” to chants of “two more years”.
Mr Trump declared his third consecutive run for the Republican nomination shortly after the midterm elections.
But he has shown precious little momentum, particularly after elections in which most of his endorsed candidates for key state posts and in Congress went down to defeat, contributing to a disappointing Republican performance.
Mr Trump (76) is also in extensive legal jeopardy, over his attempted election subversion, the retention of White House records and his business affairs.
USA Today said its poll showed that among Republican and Republican-leaning voters, enthusiasm for another Trump run is receding.
“In July, 60% of Republicans wanted Trump to run again. In October, that number had dipped to 56%. Now it has fallen to 47%, an almost-even split with the 45% who don’t want him to run for a third time.”
The new poll put Joe Biden, the president, up 47 per cent to 40 per cent in a notional rematch with Mr Trump. It put Mr DeSantis (44) ahead of Mr Biden in a notional match-up, 47 per cent to 43 per cent.
Mr Biden (80) has said he will decide on whether to run again over the Christmas holidays. – Guardian.