(FiveNation.com)- Recent polling indicates that in the event of a Republican primary, former President Donald Trump would be the clear favorite, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in second place.
2024 National Republican Primary Polling
Donald Trump: 46%
Ron DeSantis: 23%
Head-2-Head With No Other Candidates in the Field
Donald Trump: 56%
A subset of Republican supporters was also asked who they would support if Trump weren’t a candidate. The results showed that DeSantis received 39% of the vote, Pence received 17%, and Haley received 10%. Sixteen percent of respondents “don’t know” or were “unsure” whether they could identify a candidate other than Trump if he weren’t running.
Comparing Trump against current President Joe Biden in a general election, the study revealed that Trump would win with 46% to Biden’s 41%, while 13% of respondents were undecided.
In a crowded Republican primary in 2016, a few candidates emerged as clear frontrunners. A month after his June entry into the race, Trump seized the lead and stayed there for the remainder of the campaign. Only retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, another outsider, managed to match Trump in national surveys temporarily, but by late autumn of 2015, Carson’s support had dwindled.
Ted Cruz, an incumbent senator universally reviled by the Republican establishment, supplanted him as the party’s preferred Trump alternative. On the night of the Iowa caucuses, nationwide surveys of Republicans showed that Trump and Cruz combined were drawing roughly 56% of the vote, while Carson was pulling another 7%. While many prominent Republicans spoke out against Trump and declared he must not be the party’s nominee, they would not sway Republican primary voters.
That wasn’t a fluke; Republican voters overwhelmingly felt their party’s establishment was failing them and preferred unconventional candidates.
The same is true heading into 2024.
