The governor of the U.S. state of Florida, Ron DeSantis, would beat former President Donald Trump in a hypothetical head-to-head Republican primary for the 2024 presidential election, a poll shows.
DeSantis, who is seen as one of Trump’s main competitors in the Republican Party primaries – although he has never made his candidacy official, as the former president has done – would obtain 49 percent of the votes in a duel against Trump, according to a survey conducted by the Club for Growth organization and collected by ‘The Hill’.
However, with the rest of the candidates, the former president would get 37 percent of the support against 33 percent of DeSantis. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who has hinted at his candidacy, would obtain only 7 percent of the votes.
Thus, the poll — conducted among 3,015 people and with a margin of error of 1.8 percent — highlights that support for Trump and DeSantis within the party was divided between the most conservative Republicans and those who identified themselves as moderates.
In the head-to-head matchup, Trump would win with 52 percent of the vote from people who identified as very conservative. Meanwhile, DeSantis was more popular than Trump among voters who said they were somewhat conservative or moderate, securing 56 percent and 51 percent of their support, respectively.
The conservative-leaning polling group has argued that Republicans’ chances of regaining the White House if Trump were in charge would «diminish» again.
Therefore, it has called on party members to be «open to another candidate,» as detailed by the group’s president, David McIntosh, to ‘The New York Times’.
«What the club believes the Republican Party should do is make sure that whoever we nominate actually wins,» McIntosh said, recalling that DeSantis «is in the strongest position.»
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)