Florida Republican voters gave Gov. Ron DeSantis an huge reelection victory in 2022, but a poll released Monday shows they overwhelmingly prefer former President Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Trump has a 20-point lead over DeSantis.
The Florida Atlantic University/Mainstreet Research/PolCom Lab poll showed Trump at 50% among the state’s Republican voters. DeSantis was in a distant second place, with 30%.
That’s almost the same as RealClearPolitics average of national polls, which show a 32-point lead for Trump, with 33% for the former president and 21% for the Florida governor.
The poll didn’t uncover differences between men and women in their support for the two candidates.
“The poll highlights Donald Trump’s quite durable support. He does especially well with white working-class voters, who have consistently formed a steadfast base for the former president,” FAU political scientist Kevin Wagner said in a statement about the results. “This persistent support continues to bolster Trump’s strong and steady position within the party.”
There has been a slight decline for both candidates since the FAU/Mainstreet/PolCom poll conducted in April. In the previous survey, Trump had 57% and DeSantis had 33%.
Both have been extensively in the news since then. The former president appeared in court after he was indicted on charges alleging he hoarded classified documents detailing sensitive military secrets and schemed to thwart government efforts to get them back.
DeSantis won re-election by 19 percentage points in 2022. He has received intense scrutiny for the uneven start to his presidential campaign, which officially began in May. Monday’s poll showed Floridians are deeply divided over DeSantis war with Disney, but the governor gets overwhelming support for his stand from Republicans.
The slight narrowing of Trump’s advantage, which was 24 points in April and 20 points in the current survey, conducted from June 27 to July 1, suggest “the race has the potential to tighten as the election gets closer,” the pollsters said in their written analysis.
It would have to tighten a lot to make a difference. The March 19, 2024, Florida primary will be a winner-take-all contest, meaning the winning candidate will receive all of the state’s delegates for the party’s summer nominating convention.
The Trump-DeSantis gap was smaller — 54% to 37%, a 17-point difference — when Republican voters were given an matchup with just those two candidates, and none of the others seeking their party’s presidential nomination.
Biden loses
Questions about the general election, posed to Florida Democrats, independents and Republicans, show President Joe Biden would lose to either DeSantis or Trump in the general election, in November 2024.
In hypothetical matchups, either Trump or DeSantis would receive 49% of the vote.
Biden would do slightly worse against DeSantis, receiving 36% of the vote against DeSantis.
Against Trump, Biden would receive 39% of the vote.
That’s a significant Republican advantage, greater than Trump’s 3.3-point Florida win during his unsuccessful 2020 campaign for reelection.
Dukhong Kim, an FAU political scientist, said in a written statement about the poll that the results indicate DeSantis “may be a stronger candidate against the incumbent.”
The margin of error of the poll is plus or minus 3 percentage points, so the apparent DeSantis advantage may be larger, smaller or nonexistent.
Biden lost to both DeSantis and Trump among men and women.
But the Republicans do better with men than women.
DeSantis, for example, has a 20-point advantage over Biden among men.
DeSantis’ advantage among women is just 6 points.
Other candidates
Other presidential candidates were in single digits — behind the 7% undecided.
- Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley had 1%.
- Former Vice President Mike Pence had 2%.
- Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson had 2%.
- U.S. Sen Tim Scott of South Carolina had 3%.
- Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy had 4%.
- Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had 2%.
One challenge for any non-Trump candidates: The poll found that 19% of Republican voters think “supporting a candidate other than Trump in the primary is disloyal.” Most, 68%, didn’t see it as disloyal.
The poll was conducted June 27 to July 1 by Mainstreet Research for Florida Atlantic University’s PolCom Lab, which is a collaboration of the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies and Department of Political Science.
The survey used automated telephone interviews with 933 Florida voters.
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