It’s been another successful week in polls for Ron DeSantis. A week after Trump made his announcement for a 2024 bid, the support for the Florida Governor has increased.
Neighborhood Research conducted a new survey of prospective participants in the Iowa Caucus and the results showed that support for DeSantis had increased dramatically since this time last year. 32% of those polled selected DeSantis as their top candidate, while 30% favored Trump. In order to provide some context, surveys done by the same firm showed that Trump had a lead of 21 points over DeSantis in June and a massive 44 point lead over DeSantis in November of last year.
Rick Shaftan, of Neighborhood Research, said that “with support just half what it was a year ago in a time when DeSantis’ vote has nearly tripled, Trump becomes a significant underdog in the race for 2024.”
Since the midterm elections in 2022, a number of state-level polls have been conducted, and all of them have shown that DeSantis is ahead of Trump in those polls. One of those polls, conducted among Iowa Republicans and funded by the Club for Growth Action, showed that DeSantis had an eleven-point lead over Trump. According to the results of other surveys conducted by the Club for Growth, Republican voters in the states of Florida, Georgia, and New Hampshire favor DeSantis. According to the findings of CWS Research, he also leads in the state of Texas.
The situation is not as clear on a national level. Immediately before the midterm elections, YouGov produced a survey in which DeSantis finished ahead of Trump by seven points. However, other polls, including as those performed by Emerson University and Harris Insights and Analytics, suggest that Trump still maintains a dominating advantage. Trump, who announced a bid for president two years ahead of time, thought that the early filing might have helped him pre-clinch the nomination. The recent increase in DeSantis’ poll numbers may not even be as a result of him, but rather an increase in opposition of Trump.
Although DeSantis has not yet made a formal announcement of his intention to run for president of the United States, the top Republican state lawmakers in Florida say it would be a “good idea” to change a state law that would require the governor to resign if he were to become the nominee of the Republican Party. Politico reports that the speaker of the Florida house of representatives, Paul Renner, and the president of the Florida senate, Kathleen Passidomo, have both stated that they would be open to a change in the provision that a person seeking federal office must retire prior to the election.
