Former U.S. President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speak at midterm election rallies, in Dayton, Ohio, U.S. November 7, 2022 and Tampa, Florida, U.S., November 8, 2022 in a combination of file photos.Â
Gaelen Morse | Reuters
Ex-President Donald Trump would defeat Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by a wide margin in a hypothetical 2024 Republican presidential primary, a new poll finds.
Trump received 55% of Republican registered voters’ support, while DeSantis, his potential rival for the White House nomination, received just 25%, according to the Emerson College poll.
That survey was taken last week, on the heels of Trump’s announcement that he would run for the White House in 2024.
On the Democratic side, President Joe Biden‘s approval rating was just 39%, while 53% disapprove of the job he is doing, the Emerson poll found.
That is statistically the same result as the approval ratings seen for Biden in the prior Emerson national poll taken shortly before the November midterm elections.
And in a potential rematch of the 2020 election in 2024, Biden would defeat Trump by a margin of 45% to 41%, the survey found.
If DeSantis were the 2024 GOP nominee, he would lose to Biden by the same margin, according to the poll, which found that the Democratic incumbent would garner 43% of the vote, compared to 39% for the governor.
When asked about their preference for their party’s nominee in 2024, the Democrats who responded to the poll overwhelmingly picked Biden over Vice President Kamala Harris. A total of 42% of Democrats wanted Biden to be the nominee, compared to just 17% for Harris, and 12% for Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont.
The Emerson Poll found a notable education divide exists among Republican primary voters, according to Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling.
Voters with a high school degree or less support Trump by 71%. Voters with a college degree, some college, or an associate’s degree support him by 53%.
Republican voters with a postgraduate degree support Trump the least, at 32%.
The poll found that the economy is the most important issue facing both Democratic and Republican voters, followed by “threats to democracy,” immigration, abortion, healthcare and crime respectively.
Additionally, 52% of voters believe Congress should keep investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot by a mob of Trump supporters who disrupted the certification of the Electoral College victory by Biden.
Another 39% think Congress should drop that probe.
The survey was conducted between Nov. 18 and 19 with a sample of 1,380 registered voters and a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.