Former president Donald Trump may be in trouble for cinching the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election. A new poll regarding potential Republican nominees shows Florida governor Ron DeSantis is leading Trump by a whopping 23 points.
It means DeSantis has taken an enormous lead over the embattled ex-president for the race.
So far, only Trump has officially thrown his hat in the ring for the race. But he managed to do so chaotically, at a moment when he was embroiled in scandal and conflict, right after the midterm elections.
Advisors had told him to wait. But Trump did not listen, announcing his run for president in the hope it was fending off any other Republicans from fighting for the nomination.
Republican and Republican-leaning voters dealt the significant blow of 23 percent to the former president’s ego in a survey carried out by USA Today and Suffolk University.
Worse was to come for Trump on Wednesday, with the release of a Wall Street Journal survey which gave DeSantis a 14-point lead, 52 to 38 percent, in a hypothetical primary matchup.
There was some good news clinging to Trump, with the polling website FightThirtyEight still showing Trump in the lead.
But experts and pollsters said the latest new polls show that Republicans and conservative independents increasingly want Trumpism without Trump himself.
That much has been clear in the rise of DeSantis, a former military lawyer and hard-right congressman who has pursued distinctly Trumpist hardline, and theatrically cruel policies as governor of Florida, in particular on immigration and education.
Just today, DeSantis continued to court the Republican base, saying he would petition the Florida supreme court to convene a grand jury to investigate “any and all wrongdoing” with respect to Covid vaccines.
More than 83,000 people died from Covid in his state.
Trump has shown precious little momentum. Especially after the midterms, during which most of his endorsed candidates for key state posts and in Congress lost. It contributed to an overall disappointing Republican performance.
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