A.G. Gancarski
Another poll from Nevada shows that Florida’s Governor may be a better General Election bet in 2024 than Donald Trump.
A fresh survey from the Nevada Independent and OH Predictive Insights shows that Gov. Ron DeSantis would outperform the former President in a head-to-head matchup against President Joe Biden, who is, as of now, expected to be the Democratic nominee for re-election next year.
While both DeSantis and Trump mustered 42% support in the 800-voter sample, the DeSantis hypothetical kept more respondents in the undecided camp than the Trump possibility.
Biden got 40% against Trump, and just 36% against DeSantis.
The survey revealed potential ideological breaks among Nevada voters as well. Among self-identified “liberal” Republicans, DeSantis drew 62% support against Biden, with Trump pulling just 42% against that cohort.
Democratic voters marginally were more likely to flip to Trump than DeSantis no matter how they classified their ideology. The strongest Trump performance was among so-called “conservative” Democrats, with 16% of them saying they’d go with Trump, versus 11% for DeSantis.
Meanwhile, the two were essentially at the same level with independent voters no matter how they classified themselves ideologically. Two-thirds of those who identified themselves as “conservative” would support the GOP nominee whether it was DeSantis or Trump.
This survey was in the field from Jan. 30 to Feb. 6, with 800 registered voters polled, and an asserted margin of error of 3.46 percentage points.
Caveats abound, of course. The back and forth between Trump and DeSantis has been one-sided so far, with the former President offering a series of bruising if factually questionable indictments of the Florida Governor on Truth Social and in interviews. DeSantis has barely engaged.
And the binary framing of the race will be challenged as South Carolina’s Nikki Haley and other candidates explore their own 2024 campaigns, complicating polling and dividing the “anybody but Trump” contingent of GOP voters.
But other polling of Nevada voters, including a DeSantis/Trump Primary head-to-head canvassed by Posterity PAC some weeks ago, showed DeSantis with a double-digit lead over Trump.
