DeSantis now beating Trump AND Biden in poll showing most GOP voters want him to run in 2024

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is quickly emerging as one of the top 2024 presidential contenders, capable of beating both Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, an early election poll suggested Tuesday.

The new USA Today/Suffolk University The poll shows that most Republican voters want Trump to pass the torch to the 44-year-old Republican governor, despite declaring his third campaign for the White House last month.

And while the former president trails Biden in a theoretical head-to-head rematch, DeSantis has a narrow lead over the Democrat by about four points.

The Florida governor is coming off a double-digit landslide victory in the 2022 midterm elections, decisively winning another term after narrowly defeating Democrat Andrew Gillum in 2018.

DeSantis saw his national Republican star grow in the final two years of the Biden administration as a vocal critic of the Democratic president’s policies.

It has also gone to war with Disney for criticizing its anti-LGBTQ legislation that critics dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” and sent a planeload of Venezuelan immigrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in defiance of the border crisis.

Tuesday’s poll suggests that 65 percent of Republicans and right-wing voters want DeSantis to run for president in 2024, while less than a quarter said otherwise.

Trump, by contrast, had 60 percent of Republican voters pressing for him to mount a third campaign. Now that he’s done it, as of Tuesday, only 47 percent of people want him to.

That compares with 45 percent of Republican voters who said they don’t want him to run.

While DeSantis has not confirmed that he will seek the White House in 2024, preferring to say he was focused on Florida, his refusal to rule out a GOP primary challenge to Trump angered the former president.

In that what-if scenario, DeSantis led Trump by a whopping 23 percentage points: 56 percent for the governor compared to just a third for Trump.

Against Biden, DeSantis is projected to run a closer race.

While neither potential candidate gets a majority, DeSantis held a slim 47-point lead. Biden’s support wavered by 43 percent.

The margin is similar to the commander-in-chief’s advantage against Trump if the two met again in 2024.

Biden’s support stands at 47 percent, while Trump trails at 40 percent among all likely voters, according to the poll.

Both would be more than three decades older than DeSantis come Election Day.

The president has strongly suggested that he intends to seek a second term, despite concerns about his age, though he has not formally launched a campaign.

The USA Today poll shows a 5-point drop in the number of Democrats who want him to do so, from 45 percent in October to 40 percent now.

Among all respondents, only 23 percent want Biden to run for president again.

Trump faces similar opposition from within his own party.

A 61 percent majority of Republican and Republican voters told pollsters they wanted someone else to continue promoting Trump’s policies as the party’s de facto leader.

Thirty-one percent said they wanted him to run again.

It comes as Trump faces mounting legal setbacks that he largely avoided while in office.

His company was recently found guilty of tax fraud in a case brought by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

And on Monday, a US district judge in Florida lifted her previous order that effectively delayed the FBI’s investigation of classified documents seized from her Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida, paving the way for officials to investigate whether Trump mishandled any presidential files.