There is a clear winner in the battle of Florida’s Republican big beasts.
Mar-a-Lago resident Donald Trump is beating the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, by 39 points in a new poll of Republican primary voters.
The results will be seen by the former president’s campaign as another sign that his nomination is all but certain, strengthening his position as the likely Republican nominee to take on President Joe Biden.
According to the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab, about 60 percent of respondents said they would choose Trump as their candidate.
The poll was released Tuesday, a day before Republican rivals face off in Miami in their third televised debate.
A new poll of Republican primary voters in Florida shows former President Donald Trump trailing Gov. Ron DeSantis by 39 points
Trump is the clear frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination. DeSantis has struggled to get his campaign going despite winning re-election in Florida in a landslide last year
Trump will stay away, as he has done at each of the previous debates, leaving it to the candidates to take second place.
The poll showed that only 21 percent of Republicans would choose DeSantis, in a state where he won a second term as governor in a landslide just a year ago.
Trump’s former UN ambassador Nikki Haley strengthens her position with six percent of the votes in third place.
She is followed by former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on two counts, and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy on one count.
“Despite historically high approval ratings in the polls, Governor DeSantis losing steam in his home state does not bode well for his national campaign,” said Michael Binder, PORL faculty director and UNF political science professor.
“Even if you wipe out the rest of the competition in head-to-head competition, Trump is 20 points ahead of DeSantis.”
DeSantis has struggled to kick his campaign into high gear.
Trump even defeated him with a series of major endorsements at home. He has a majority of Florida’s congressional delegation in his corner, including Senator Rick Scott who came out for Trump last week.
And he received a series of local expressions of support at the party’s Freedom Summit last weekend.
Florida Republicans had former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in third place — but lagged far behind Trump and DeSantis even as she gained momentum
It was the final blow for DeSantis. A day later, one of his main arguments, that he is more electable than the baggage-laden Trump, was upended by a poll showing the former president beating Biden in five of six swing states.
According to the New York Times/Siena College poll, Trump is ahead of voters in Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania by margins of up to 10 percentage points.
The new PORL survey of 788 registered Republican voters, who are likely to participate in the state’s primaries, also asked about attitudes toward Trump’s efforts to cling to power after the 2020 election.
About 71 percent said the statement “he was merely exercising his right to participate in the election” came closest to their opinion.
Conversely, 16 percent said they agreed more with the statement, “He went so far as to threaten American democracy.”
“Given the support for Trump in the upcoming election, it is not surprising that most of these voters believe he was within his rights to participate in the election,” Binder said.
“Interestingly, the 16 percent who think he threatened democracy generally narrowly prefer DeSantis to Nikki Haley.”