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New Poll: DeSantis Is Beating Biden Handily in Key Swing States, However...

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  June 27, 2023 10:05 AM

A fresh NBC News poll has both the Trump and DeSantis campaigns energized -- but for different reasons.  Trump allies are touting its GOP primary top line finding that the former president is still leading the 2024 Republican presidential field by a wide margin, currently garnering a 51 percent majority among an increasingly crowded field.  Gov. Ron DeSantis remains in second place, nearly 30 percentage points behind Trump nationally, with nobody else cracking double digits.  If nothing changes over the next half-year, particularly in the crucial early states, Trump could be on a glide path to the nomination.  Indeed, if he remains in a dominant position (for what it's worth, a recent CNN poll showed his position less dominant) over the next two months, there's a greater chance he'll act on his public flirtations with the idea of skipping primary debates.

What Team Trump is downplaying or dismissing -- and what DeSantis supporters are widely sharing -- is the same survey's general election ballot.  Nationally, it finds Donald Trump trailing unpopular incumbent Joe Biden by four percentage points, whereas DeSantis is tied with Biden.  And within the essential battleground states that decide the winner of the presidency, DeSantis' advantage over Biden, and his outperformance of Trump, is even more glaring:

NBC's data shows DeSantis hitting 50 percent and leading Biden by six points across the key battlegrounds, whereas Trump trails Biden by two points in those places.  What's interesting is that a "generic Republican" tops Biden in these numbers -- by six points nationally, and five points in swing states.  Trump, who I think almost everyone would agree is the opposite of a "generic Republican," trails on both metrics.  This is an early echo of a phenomenon we saw in the 2022 midterm elections, which should have been a decisive red wave, but wasn't.  In the midterms, "generic" GOP candidates over-performed Trump-aligned ones by five points.  Independents backed certain Republicans, but not others, leading to a weaker-than-expected overall GOP showing among these non-affiliated voters.  That was the difference between the anticipated wave, and the realized trickle.  Looking ahead, part of DeSantis' appeal to GOP voters is that he would have a better chance of beating Joe Biden than Donald Trump, who already lost to Biden.  This independent survey reinforces that dynamic, backing up the results a DeSantis-aligned pollster published last week, highlighting three of the most important swing states in the country: 

As you can see, per this data, DeSantis runs five-to-eight points better than Trump across Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania, just as DeSantis runs eight points stronger than Trump in the NBC battleground subset.  It's all well and good for DeSantis backers (and/or 'over-Trumpers' looking for an alternative) to trumpet the findings, but it's all hypothetical and meaningless if DeSantis can't get himself into a general election setting.  And if the primaries started tomorrow, it looks like he wouldn't.  I maintain my belief that Trump could again win the presidency in 2024, especially if a recession arrives, but his likelihood of doing so is lower than other Republicans', based on what voters have demonstrated repeatedly over the last half-decade.  With public sentiment looking like this, Biden is and should be highly vulnerable:

One might be tempted to think that if voters' attitudes remain this sour a little over a year from now, the opposition party should have a layup victory in the offing.  I'd typically agree, if I didn't know what happened last November.  Deep dissatisfaction with Biden, failing policies, and Democratic extremism just aren't enough to guarantee Republican wins if the party is offering an alternative choice that an important group of voters simply will not support.  What GOP base voters do with that information is up to them.

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