OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former President Donald Trump started his campaign for president with most Republicans on his side. Currently, a number of candidates want to see how strong his grip on the Republican nominations is before the 2024 elections.
But a Morning Consult survey makes it clear that the Republican primary is all but over, as 61% of Republican primary voters support Trump.
DeSantis’s lead over Trump has dropped to a new low of 49 percentage points. This comes after a week in which he had a record 51-point deficit against the front-runner. Support for the governor of Florida also hit a new low of 12 percent. He is only three points ahead of Vivek Ramaswamy, whom about one in five people who might vote in the primary said is their second choice.
If the GOP primary or caucus were held today in their state, most voters (61%) would vote for Trump. Only 12% would vote for DeSantis.
Ramaswamy has the support of 9% of possible party voters, which is 2 points more than last week. At 6%, Haley is in first place. Chris Christie (3%), Sen. Tim Scott (2%), Gov. Doug Burgum (1%), and former Vice President Mike Pence are in that order.
The survey found that 32% of potential GOP primary voters who are supporting Trump see DeSantis as their second choice, while 42% of those supporting the Florida governor see Trump as their first choice.
Around 24% of Trump supporters and 17% of DeSantis supporters want Ramaswamy to be their second choice. Only 8% of Trump supporters and 15% of DeSantis supporters want Haley to be their second choice.
About 16% of Trump supporters say they wouldn’t know who to vote for if Trump wasn’t running, but only 5% of DeSantis supporters said the same thing.
Trump is liked by 78% of the party’s potential voters and disliked by 20%. This is a small increase in his net favorability since the end of September.
Late last month, a leading pollster some consider to be the top in the nation predicted a potential “electoral landslide” for Trump next year as President Joe Biden continues to slide in approval ratings and “Bidenomics” continues to eat into ordinary Americans’ paychecks.
In an interview with radio host Michael Patrick Leahy for The Tennessee Star report on Tuesday, pollster John McLaughlin discussed what current state and national polling means, what polls to watch, and how to analyze new polling as it comes out in the months ahead.
McLaughlin began by noting that the more legal trouble Trump faces, the more his polling numbers rise.
“We see, apparently, every time the Department of Justice or a state left-wing district attorney indicts Donald Trump, his poll numbers go up,” Leahy began. “I’m looking at the Morning Consult poll today. Just came out: Trump 61; DeSantis 13; Haley 7; Ramaswamy 7; Pence 5; Christie 3; Scott 1; Burgum 1. Trump by 48 points.
“Morning Consult has Trump and Biden tied, but I’ve seen Trump up 9 in the Washington Post poll; and Trump up 3 in another. The polls say it’s looking good for Donald J. Trump,” he added, swinging it over to McLaughlin:
McLaughlin then made a startling prediction:
Yes, because it would be an electoral landslide because when you look at it, due to the census, there’s a little more electoral vote our way.
But if you look at the toss-up states from last time and you say, ‘This means he’s going to win Wisconsin, Michigan’ – that’s why I went to Detroit last week to stand up for union workers, going to lose their jobs in China.
Arizona has 11 electoral votes.
Nevada 6 – we could win that. That was close last time.
We’ll win Georgia because they changed the election law to require a voter ID, not just for in-person but also for absentees—there are 16 electoral votes there.
We got a shot at Pennsylvania in spite of their attempts to manipulate the mail-in votes. There are 19 electoral votes there.
And Ohio has 7 – Ohio, we’re gonna win.
But there are 77 electoral votes that would switch.
So we would go from last time, 232 electoral votes – we’d be at 304 already.
