(Republicaninformer.com)- Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis hasn’t announced a bid for president in 2024 yet, but he’s already closing the gap between him and former President Donald Trump in recent polls.
Trump announced last week that he will be running for the GOP nomination in 2024, making him the first candidate to officially announce he will run. DeSantis is widely believed to be preparing for a 2024 run himself, though that announcement hasn’t come as of yet.
Still, a new survey from the Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll that was shared with media outlet The Hill exclusively showed DeSantis is growing his support network among Republican voters.
In just the last month, the governor of Florida boosted his support in a hypothetical Republican 2024 primary by 11 total points, giving him 28% of the vote. Support for Trump in that same time period dropped 9 points, though he still garners 46% of support.
If you look at just the overall support numbers, Trump is still out in front by a hefty 18 points — 46% to 28%. That really only tells part of the story, though.
It would be expected that Trump — who has maintained a huge national profile over the last six-plus years — would have much higher support from Republican voters. The fact that his support is shrinking almost as fast as DeSantis’ support is growing is a sign that more and more GOP voters believe a change is in order at the top of their party.
The Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll’s co-director, Mark Penn, commented on the most recent release of the survey when he said:
“Month after month, DeSantis has been rising, and now he is cutting significantly into Trump. If they both run, this will be quite a race, and Trump could well lose.”
The 2024 presidential election will be the third in a row that Trump runs, making it a very historical election in that sense. In fact, not many presidents who lose an election end up running again in the future — especially if the one they lost was a re-election.
Trump has long teased that he would be running for president again in 2024, and he certainly had to be hoping that he would be making the announcement from a position of power, as The Hill reported.
Instead, the former president announced his campaign not long after many of the midterm election results had come in, which showed that the predicted Republican red wave never materialized. Many political pundits have said a major reason for that is voters are tired of Trump and decided not to back the candidates he endorsed in the general election, opting instead for Democratic alternatives.
At the same time, DeSantis is really riding high. He won a landslide re-election in Florida, a 19-point victory over Democrat Charlie Crist. DeSantis carried Miami-Dade County, which is historically very liberal, the first time a Republican had done that in nearly 20 years.
