It's been over a week since Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) formally entered the race for the Republican presidential primary. Who gets the nomination will almost certainly come down to DeSantis or former and potentially future President Donald Trump, though the latter has been running away with it in the polls. A previous note about such polls had been that DeSantis wasn't yet a declared candidate. Well, now he is.
Multiple polls have been conducted and released now since DeSantis has announced. As it turns out, not much has changed. In fact, if anything has changed, it's that he's actually polling more poorly than he was before.
A Yahoo! News/YouGov poll conducted May 25-May 30 showed that Trump leads with 53 percent of support from potential Republican primary voters among the seven declared candidates, compared to DeSantis' 25 percent support. Those results signal an upward shift from Trump, who had 48 percent earlier in the month, and a downward shift for DeSantis, who had 28 percent at that same time period.
As Yahoo! News did mention about the poll:
It’s worth noting that while the margin of error for the full Yahoo News/YouGov survey is 2.7%, smaller subsets of respondents — like potential Republican primary voters — always have a larger margin of error to account for random irregularity in the numbers. The swing toward Trump and away from DeSantis technically teeters right on the edge of this margin of error (4.9%).
Another poll showing concerns for DeSantis comes from Rasmussen Reports. Asked to choose between the two leading Republican candidates, 58 percent of Republican voters would vote for Trump while 30 percent would vote for DeSantis.
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DeSantis does enjoy a higher favorable than unfavorable rating among voters of 49-42 percent, as well as a 70 percent favorable rating among Republicans. A good amount of respondents do believe that DeSantis is likely to get the nomination:
Forty-eight percent (48%) of all Likely Voters believe it is likely that DeSantis will win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, including 12% who think it’s Very Likely. Forty-two percent (42%) say it’s unlikely DeSantis will win the GOP nomination, including 15% who consider it Not At All Likely.
Fifty-four percent (54%) of Republicans, 43% of Democrats and 47% of unaffiliated voters believe it’s at least somewhat likely DeSantis will win the Republican nomination next year. Interestingly, more Democrats (16%) than Republicans (10%) think a DeSantis nomination is Very Likely.
When analyzing the data, the National Pulse's Raheem J. Kassam pointed out that DeSantis had slipped from 32 percent in a February poll to this 30 percent. "And while the Florida Governor’s slippage is with Rasmussen’s three point margin of error, former President Donald Trump’s massive spike in support is definitely not. The 45th President rose a whopping 13 points in comparison to February, and since DeSantis’s campaign launch. He now stands at 58 percent, versus 45 percent just three months ago," Kassam noted.
That poll was conducted May 30-June 1, with 1,012 likely voters and a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Make America Great Again Inc. was also too happy to tout these poll results in an email press release from Monday morning, with the subject line "'DeSantis LOSES Support Post Launch, Trump Adds 13 Points in Head-to-Head.'" A Friday email press release also highlighted the Yahoo! News write-up of the poll, with the subject line of "Poll: DeSantis Loses Support After Disastrous Launch."
The Yahoo! News' headline similarly read "Poll: No bump for DeSantis from 2024 launch as Trump continues to climb," with the write-up at one point mentioning the poll "suggests that DeSantis may have actually lost ground against frontrunner and former President Donald Trump since officially entering the race for the 2024 GOP nomination during a glitchy Twitter Spaces event with the platform’s billionaire owner Elon Musk."
The write-up also delved into why DeSantis may have lost support, with original emphasis:
One reason may be the unconventional nature of DeSantis’s rollout. The governor’s problem is not that potential Republican primary voters have turned against him in droves because the audio cut out on Twitter Spaces or because he used too much right-wing internet jargon in his initial campaign appearances; overall, just 13% of them say that DeSantis’s launch left them with a “negative” impression.
But it’s possible that by foregoing the usual announcement theatrics — cheering crowd; dramatic backdrop; wall-to-wall cable news coverage — DeSantis missed an opportunity to improve his flagging image. Just a third (32%) of potential Republican primary voters, for instance, characterize their impressions of DeSantis’s launch as “positive” — while nearly twice as many describe those impressions as “neutral” (39%) or say they’re not sure (16%).
DeSantis’s favorable rating among potential GOP primary voters (77%) is also lower than Trump’s (83%). Trump’s relentless attacks against DeSantis may have taken a toll.
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Notably, the number of independents who now said they would definitely not vote for DeSantis rose 4 points (from 34% to 38%) — while the share of potential Republican primary voters who said they definitely would vote for DeSantis dropped by six points (from 55% to 47%).
Whether this reflects concerns about the connection between “extreme” policies and electability is beyond the scope of the poll. But for now, at least, potential Republican primary voters are not buying DeSantis’s claim that only he and Biden — and not Trump — “have a chance to get elected president.” When asked directly “which of these two Republicans do you think has the best chance of winning the 2024 general election for president,” 55% of them select Trump – and just 31% select DeSantis.
Nonetheless, the poll shows that Biden now leads Trump among registered voters 48% to 41% (up from 45% to 43% in early May). And despite his talking points, DeSantis doesn’t perform any better, trailing Biden by 6 points (40% to 46%).
Karoline Leavitt, the spokeswoman for MAGA Inc. also provided a statement to Townhall about the poll numbers. "Ron DeSantis is collapsing in the polls because more and more voters are learning he doesn't share their values. His votes to cut Social Security and impose a national sales tax are highly unpopular. DeSantis can't explain where he stands on the Ukraine War just like he can't explain how to pronounce his last name. President Trump has a forward looking agenda and is ready to deliver again. That's why he leads in both the primary and general election polls," she said.
FiveThirtyEight shows Trump is ahead of DeSantis nationally with 53.9 percent to 21.1 percent.
RealClearPolitics (RCP) currently shows Trump with a +1.8 lead over President Joe Biden, while DeSantis has a +1.2 lead.
Nick Arama at our sister site of RedState also last week highlighted "Big Concerns for DeSantis" when it comes to the results of a Morning Consult tracker, which shows Trump with 56 percent support among potential Republican primary voters. DeSantis has 22 percent.
"On May 24, it was 57 for Trump and 21 for DeSantis, according to the Morning Consult numbers. So if they thought that they were going get a bump off the announcement, DeSantis didn’t get that. The numbers are essentially the same," Arama highlighted in his write-up.
DeSantis' favorable numbers among those potential Republican primary numbers are looking good at 71 percent. Trump still performs better, though, with 79 percent. However, Trump has higher unfavorable numbers at 20 percent, compared to DeSantis' 14 percent.
The survey conducted May 24-May 27 included 777 potential Republican primary voters and a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
When it comes to hypothetical match-ups against Biden, Trump and Biden are tied with 43 percent support each, while Biden leads DeSantis 43-40 percent. That survey, conducted May 26-May 28, included 6,000 registered voters with an unweighed margin of error of plus or minus 1 percentage point.
DeSantis and Trump both call Florida home. It's also definitely a state to watch regardless. Trump fares far better, though, at least according to one poll. The Sunshine State Battleground Poll, which was conducted May 31-June 2, shows Trump with 52.5 percent support compared to DeSantis' 32.6 percent support.
"Polling of the Florida landscape has been all over the place so far," reporting from Florida Politics on the poll noted:
In May, a Victory Insights poll revealed a dead heat, with DeSantis and Trump each drawing 38% support.
A National Research Inc. poll commissioned in May by American Greatness shows Donald Trump ahead of the Florida Governor, 42% to 34%.
In a Mason-Dixon Polling and Strategy survey conducted in late March, DeSantis was ahead of Trump, 44% to 39%, with other names far behind.
A March survey of 443 Republican Florida voters from Emerson College shows the former President up 3 points over the Florida Governor. Trump took 47% of those surveyed with DeSantis taking 44%.
The Florida Governor had 52% support in the University of North Florida Public Opinion Research Lab survey of the race conducted early in March, 25 points ahead of Trump.
Meanwhile, a January survey by Suffolk University and USA Today found Trump was the choice of 47% of those surveyed, while 40% preferred DeSantis.
Losing Florida in the 2016 presidential primary to Trump in March contributed to forcing Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) out of the race. Trump called New York home at the time.
During a press call on the night of his announcement, DeSantis did not seem deterred when answering a question from Townhall about the poll numbers. "I would be shocked if the former president wasn't leading when it comes to his name ID," DeSantis said about Trump, also pointing to how he's one of the most recognized figures in the world in addition to having previously been the president.
But, DeSantis also acknowledged the nationwide recognition and support bestowed upon him while he's been the governor of Florida, as he argued that "I don't think there has been a governor in the modern history of the party that has had more nationwide support" than he does now. He went on to also tout his "record of accomplishment that I don't think anyone can match either."
The governor has often reminded that he won his race last year against Charlie Crist, who was running this time as a Democrat, by close to 20 points. Bringing that race back to the question about how he is polling behind Trump, the governor called to mind that polls did not have him winning by nearly 20 points. The RealClearPolitics (RCP) data had him up by +12.2 points heading into Election Day.
DeSantis also pointed to having a "good operation here" and emphasized how his campaign has just started. "I don't think the average Republican primary voter is obsessing over this yet. I think that that'll take some time. But I think we have this these next few months to really build out what we need to build out," he offered, squaring away the poll discrepancy and how he can make it up. "I think we're gonna have a lot of ground to draw on. And we think there's a lot of fertile ground out there," he went on to say.
Buckle up, folks. We're still many months away from the Iowa Caucus, the first state in a long primary season.
