Ron DeSantis down by nearly 20 points to Donald Trump in Pennsylvania GOP poll

A new poll from Pennsylvania shows former President Donald Trump with a big lead over Ron DeSantis in a potential Presidential Primary matchup.

The Public Policy Polling survey shows the former President with near-majority support in a crowded field including DeSantis. Trump took 49% support among the 616 likely Republican Primary voters polled, with DeSantis in a distant second place with 31% backing. Former Vice President Mike Pence and former United Nations envoy Nikki Haley each took just 5% support, good for a tie for third place.

Trump led DeSantis by 22 points with voters who said they were “somewhat” or “very” conservative, but “moderate” Republicans actually preferred the Governor, 38% to 34%.

Trump also leads the head-to-head battle, but the survey shows good news for DeSantis, who consolidates the Pence and Haley shares. Trump again took 49% support, with the Florida Governor 8 points back. DeSantis had a 16-point lead with self-styled “moderate” Republicans, with Trump up 8 points with those who were “somewhat” conservative and 15 points with the “very” conservative.

In polling of a larger field and the two-way matchup, Trump led with both men and women. Trump carried the majority of women in both cases, but with men, DeSantis was within 4 points of Trump in the binary battle.

DeSantis will be in the state March 30, where he will speak at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference in Harrisburg. Meanwhile, other polling has shown him better positioned than the PPP survey. A poll from Susquehanna Polling and Research found DeSantis with 37% support, 5 points ahead of Trump.

Though a Florida native, DeSantis has credited his ancestral roots in the Rust Belt regions of Pennsylvania and neighboring Ohio as being key to surviving the left-wing crucibles of Yale and Harvard Law School. He made the remarks to Fox News Channel’s Mark Levin.

“My father’s from western Pennsylvania, my mother’s from Northeastern Ohio. So that is, like, steel country. That is like blue-collar salt of the earth and, as you know Mark, Florida’s very eclectic. People kind of come from all over, we do have a culture and so I grew up in that culture, but really it was kind of those Rust Belt values that raised me,” he said last month.