According to Republicans polled in a new nationwide survey, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis narrowly edges out former President Donald Trump as the favored Republican leader.
According to an Associated Press/NORC Center survey 22% of Republicans want DeSantis to be the party’s leader, while only 20% want Trump to be the party’s leader.
However, more than a third of those polled (34%), indicated they didn’t know who should head the Republican Party or declined to give an answer, indicating that a significant amount of GOP support is still up for grabs.
No other Republican in the poll surpassed 1% of the vote, including former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
On Tuesday Haley became only the second major Republican after Trump to announce a 2024 GOP presidential candidacy.
While the former president was previously the clear favorite in early GOP nomination polls for 2024, DeSantis has begun to surge significantly, surpassing him in several recent polls.
Almost every poll now shows Trump and DeSantis as the favorites to win the nomination, with all other candidates in the low single digits.
DeSantis, a former congressman, has seen his popularity among conservatives around the country skyrocket in the last three years. In large part due to his popular anti-lockdown policies during the coronavirus pandemic in addition to his refusal to bow to woke orthodoxies.
According to sources in DeSantis’ wider political sphere, any presidential campaign launch would take place only after the conclusion of Florida’s current legislative session.
The AP-NORC survey was conducted with 1,068 respondents from January 26 to January 30 and had a margin of error of 4.2 percentage points.
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