While continued rumors of a possible indictment against Donald Trump haven’t yet panned out, the issue has been giving a jolt to the former president’s poll numbers.
Depending on the source, Trump is still sitting at or above 50% support in the 2024 GOP primary field but some recent polls have seen an uptick since last week.
According to numbers released last Tuesday from Morning Consult, the field is still Trump’s to lose at this point:
Donald Trump trounced Gov. Ron DeSantis among Republican primary voters in a poll released Tuesday that shows the former president getting a spike in support over the weekend when he claimed he would be arrested by the Manhattan district attorney.
Trump leads DeSantis 54% to 26% as the Florida governor, who has yet to formally announce a 2024 presidential run but is expected to be a leading contender, recorded his lowest level of support in the survey since last December, according to the Morning Consult tracking poll.
It was conducted between Friday and Sunday, encompassing two of the days when Trump began posting a series of messages on his Truth Social platform that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg would arrest him Tuesday over a $130,000 hush-money payment to p-rn star Stormy Daniels in the weeks before the 2016 election.
However, there is a different story brewing when you zoom in on the race and look at early states such as Iowa and New Hampshire. While the national numbers are a good barometer of overall support, it’s the individual state caucuses and primaries that matter in the end.
In that regard, DeSantis, who hasn’t yet announced a presidential run, is looking pretty good:
Driving the news: The surveys, conducted by Public Opinion Strategies from March 21 to 23 for an outside client (not a candidate or super PAC) found DeSantis leading Trump by eight points (45%-37%) in a head-to-head matchup in Iowa and tied with Trump (39%-39%) in New Hampshire.
In a more crowded field including Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, DeSantis was tied with Trump in Iowa and trailed him by 12 points in New Hampshire.
Why it matters: National polling has shown Trump significantly ahead of DeSantis, but these polls suggest DeSantis is performing better in the early states where voters pay closer attention.
The head-to-head polling is semi-meaningless since the caucus voting will likely be split by a handful of candidates. That is unless they drop out before the Iowa caucus leaving it essentially a Trump-DeSantis matchup.
The inference here is that among Republican primary voters who are “paying attention,” as Axios puts it, DeSantis is faring better against Trump than national polls would suggest.
On the other hand, then there are stories like this floating around painting DeSantis’ donors and supporters as “nervous” that the popular Florida governor might blow his chances before even getting in the race:
At a Sunday luncheon following the annual Red Cross ball in Palm Beach, Florida, a group of 16 prominent Republicans, described by one attendee as a mix of DeSantis backers and Trump “skeptics,” discussed misgivings about the governor’s standing for the future if he tussles with the former president.
“They liked him — many of them might even support him,” the person who was at the event said of DeSantis. “But they thought on balance that his long-term future was better without him trying to take Trump head on.”
“He will get scarred up” by Trump, the person added.
Then there’s conservative billionaire shipping goods magnate Richard Uihlein and his wife, Elizabeth, whose $500,000 in combined contributions ranked them among the most generous donors to DeSantis’ 2022 re-election campaign.
A person familiar with the strategy around Uihlein’s spending said that right now, “The brakes are pumped,” adding, “The polling really made different people pause.”
The “polling” being referred to in the previous sentence is the Morning Consult poll we listed above where Trump was beating DeSantis by 28 points nationally.
For the most part, the “DeSantis is doomed” talk is probably overblown and rather pessimistic among a group of donors and backers that are semi-resigned to the fact that this is Trump’s party and the rest are just players on the periphery.
That sentiment, however, is likely overblown as well, especially considering the state polling which suggests a tighter race than the national polls would lead you to believe.
As DeSantis draws closer to a possible announcement, the attacks from Trump will only intensify, especially if it looks like the race will become highly competitive.
