by Arjun Singh
Former President Donald Trump is leading his closest challenger, Ron DeSantis, in the 2024 Republican presidential primary by 37 points, even after indictments in New York and Florida, according to a new poll released on Monday.
Trump was indicted by Manhattan’s Democratic District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, and the Department of Justice’s Special Counsel Jack Smith in March and June, respectively, on state and federal charges. Despite the indictments, Trump is still supported by 54 percent of Republican voters, who say they will back him in the 2024 presidential primary, according to a new poll by Siena College for The New York Times.
Trump is ahead of his nearest challenger, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, by 37 percent, with DeSantis having merely 17 percent support among GOP voters. The gap between DeSantis and Trump has widened since the last iteration of the poll, where Trump led DeSantis by merely 23 percent, in October 2022.
Trump’s lead is consistent across nearly every category of Republican primary voters, with the support of both 55 percent of men and 53 percent of women. He also leads DeSantis and other candidates across all age groups and ethnic backgrounds by double digits, according to the poll.
Trump’s largest lead was among Hispanic GOP voters, where he earned the support of 55 percent of them. He also was also supported by 32 percent of Democrats who plan to vote in Republican primaries where permissible, while DeSantis only gained 3 percent support from this group.
The only categories in which DeSantis led Trump in the poll were among Republicans who voted for Joe Biden in 2020, where he had 8 percent support to Trump’s 2 percent, and among Republicans who declared themselves not open to Trump as well as those who had an unfavorable opinion of Trump.
Beneath DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence and former Republican Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina placed third with 3 percent support, each. Vivek Ramaswamy followed them with 2 percent support.
Other polling questions indicated Trump’s strength, with 52 percent of all Republican voters saying they were “only considering Donald Trump.” In a two-way race between Trump and DeSantis, Trump led by 31 percent.
The poll was conducted between July 23 and 27, 2023, and surveyed 1,329 registered voters nationwide of whom 818 were registered Republican voters. The error margins were plus or minus 3.67 percent for all voters and plus or minus 3.96 percent for Republicans.
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Arjun Singh is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Donald Trump” by Gage Skidmore CC2.0
