Poll: DeSantis closes gap, but still trails Trump by big margin
Donald Trump’s post-indictment bounce (how strange to be typing those words) seems to be receding. A YouGov poll of Republican voters finds that he now leads Ron DeSantis by 16 points in a head-to-head contest. Two weeks ago, shortly after the indictment, the lead was 26 points.
If DeSantis is 16 points behind Trump, that’s still not a great place to be. Remember, though, that DeSantis hasn’t yet announced his candidacy and is considerably less known to Republican voters than the former president is.
The You Gov poll finds that for the first time since February, fewer than half of Republican voters say they would prefer Trump (49%, down 5 points) to “someone else” as the party’s nominee. A slim majority say either that they would prefer someone else (39%) or that they’re not sure (12%).
The poll also finds public opinion trending against Trump on his New York indictment:
The number of Americans who approve of Trump “being indicted for falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to a porn star” has increased by 5 percentage points over the last two weeks (to 47%, up from 42%) while disapproval has fallen (to 37%, down from 39%). The number who think Trump did what he’s been accused of has risen as well (to 48%, up from 45%), and about the same share (47%) say Trump’s actions constitute a crime (versus just 31% who say they do not). Among registered voters, a majority (51%) now believe Trump committed a crime in this case; only 34% say he did not commit a crime.
There has even been some erosion among Republican voters. According to the YouGov poll, today 19% of them approve of Trump’s indictment. Two weeks ago, that number was 12%.
Once DeSantis enters the race and Republican voters begin focusing on it, they will have to decide how much weight to give the “electability” factor and which way it cuts. It was Joe Biden’s electability that, in my opinion, turned the race against Bernie Sanders in his favor in 2020.
Is DeSantis more electable than Trump? Right now, the polls don’t support that view. DeSantis leads Biden by 1.6 points in the Real Clear Politics average. Trump leads Biden by an almost identical 1.7 points.
However, Ruy Teixeira finds that DeSantis has hidden electability strengths Trump seems to lack (and this does not include Trump’s legal difficulties, which could be considerably worse a year from now). Teixeira writes:
Across the two March polls where relevant data are available (Marquette Law School and Harvard-Harris), DeSantis averaged a 12-point advantage over Biden among non-college-educated voters. That compares with Trump’s modest four-point advantage among non-college-educated voters in 2020.
Modeled estimates show that an improvement of five points in the Republican share of the working-class vote (and a corresponding five-point decline in the Democratic vote share) would — all else equal — produce a solid 312-226 GOP electoral vote majority in 2024. The states that move into the GOP column are Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada by three points, Arizona and Georgia by four points and Wisconsin by five points.
But let’s not forget that, given Biden’s mishandling of the economy, Trump’s relative standing with non-college-educated voters has probably improved in the two years since Bumbling Joe took office.
Teixeira continues:
Among Hispanic voters, DeSantis’s relative strength against Biden might prove to be greater. In March polls, DeSantis was losing Hispanics by seven points to Biden compared with Trump’s [2020] deficit of 25 points — a difference of 18 points. And consider his track record. In 2020, Biden won the Hispanic vote in Florida by nine points. But in the 2022 gubernatorial election, DeSantis carried the Hispanic vote in the state by 13 points.
DeSantis won heavily Hispanic Miami-Dade County, historically the Democrats’ firewall, by 11 points. He carried Osceola County by almost seven points — a county where Puerto Ricans, once a dependable Democratic vote, loom large. Statewide, DeSantis split the Puerto Rican vote nearly 50-50 with Democratic gubernatorial nominee Charlie Crist.
Trump’s standing with Latinos, compared to Biden’s, has undoubtedly improved since 2020. However, I would be surprised if he has closed his gap to -7, where the YouGov poll measures that of DeSantis.
Teixeira is writing about a potential electability advantage that DeSantis may possess over Trump. As long as the polls show Trump doing as well against Biden as DeSantis does, DeSantis isn’t likely to get mileage out of an electability argument.
Indeed, even if the polls show DeSantis to be running more strongly than Trump, it’s not clear that this will matter unless Trump trails Biden. And even then, an electability argument might not resonate — whether because many Republicans don’t trust polls (or at least polls with results they don’t like) or because a critical mass of GOP voters are okay with risking defeat in the name of MAGA. (To be fair, I might support DeSantis even if polls show Trump running somewhat better against Biden than the Florida governor does.)
Still, it’s worth keeping an eye on the comparative general election polling of the two GOP frontrunners. A divergence in their performances might influence enough Republican voters to tip the outcome of their battle for the nomination.