DeSantis takes his campaign to South Carolina as polls show he has LOST ground against front-runner Trumps

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis arrived in South Carolina on Friday on the third leg of an early state swing after receiving news that his disastrous campaign launch had him losing ground to front-runner Donald Trump.

A new poll shows the former president has increased his lead over DeSantis by eight points since early May.

The data will come as a blow to DeSantis, who last week used an online interview with Twitter owner Elon Musk to enter the race. But outages on Twitter Spaces caused the event to start late and listeners were repeatedly kicked out of the feed.

A Yahoo News/YouGov van 1,520 adults found that Trump had increased his share of support from 48 percent in early May to 53 percent.

DeSantis’ share fell from 28 percent to 25 percent, giving the former president a 28 percent lead.

However, only 13 percent said the launch failure left them with an “unfavorable” impression.

Still, the data will be a headache for the DeSantis campaign, which is hammering out the message that Florida’s governor is more eligible than Trump.

Against that backdrop, DeSantis will hold three events in South Carolina on Friday, following swings through New Hampshire and Iowa — three of the key states in the primary race.

His Never Back Down super-PAC ramps up activity in Palmetto State to coincide with the visit. According to a source familiar with the plans, the group will be knocking on doors over the weekend and the group has a series of messages of support to roll out in the coming days.

Analysts say all is not lost at this early stage and DeSantis still has a path to winning the Republican nomination.

James Johnson, co-founder of polling firm JL Partners, said his firm’s data suggested Trump’s rule could prove tenuous in the coming weeks.

So even though his poll showed DeSantis trailing 15 points in Iowa and 33 points back in New Hampshire, nearly half of Trump supporters said Florida’s governor was their second choice.

And they used the same word to describe him – “strong” – as they used to describe the former president.

“Trump voters don’t use the same insults he uses at the rallies,” he said.

“Trump has so far failed to define DeSantis negatively in the minds of Republican primary voters.”

In addition, he beats Trump on the three most important points for Republican voters in New Hampshire: “Can beat Joe Biden in an election,” “Is competent,” and “Stands up to wake values.”

“That’s pretty unique for a poll where the other candidate has such a big lead,” Johnson said.

Still, Trump said Thursday night that he thought DeSantis would soon fade from view.

“You know, I’m really going after whoever is second and I think whoever is second has gone down so much and so quickly that I don’t think he’s going to be second for long. I think he’ll be third or fourth,” Trump told Sean Hannity at a Fox News town hall.

The two passed the time jabbing at each other.

Trump used his time in Iowa to push back against DeSantis’ argument that he can serve two terms in office to push his agenda, while his opponent would be limited to just one term.

“Who wants to wait eight years?” Trump said, insisting he only needed six months to unravel President Joe Biden’s policies.

For his part, DeSantis said Trump had already made one attempt to solve the country’s problems.

He asked, “Why didn’t he do it in his first four years?”