Donald Trump fundraises off Florida poll showing him ahead of Ron DeSantis

Former President Donald Trump may only have a three point lead in a new Florida poll, but he’s still fundraising off of it.

And his campaign operation claims that the “end” of the GOP race for the nomination may be here before it even began.

On the heels of an Emerson College Poll released this week that shows him ahead of Ron DeSantis in a hypothetical Florida Presidential Preference Primary next year, Trump’s political operation sent out an email to supporters Saturday.

“[ALERT] New poll out of Florida” notes, correctly in this case, that Trump “leads the entire GOP field” in the survey.

“This is HUGE, Friend. One of the country’s most trusted pollsters now even shows President Trump WINNING the great state of Florida,” the email asserts.

“There’s no denying it, Republican Primary Voters are UNITING behind ‘Trump 2024.’
Now, on the heels of this new momentum, we have the chance to effectively END the primary TODAY so that we can turn our focus 100% to CRUSHING Biden and the radical Democrats.”

The email then moves to a call-to-action, seeking the largest “grassroots fundraising surge” to date, and offering a 1200% match.

While Trump indeed led DeSantis, 47% to 44%, the Emerson College pollster still presented the Sunshine State battle as essentially tied.

In a polling memo, Spencer Kimball, Executive Director of Emerson College Polling said, “Nearly one year out from the Florida Presidential Primary, DeSantis and Trump are in a two-way race for the Republican nomination, statistically even with one another. While 90% of Republican voters approve of DeSantis, that does not translate into a firewall of support over the former President for the nomination in their home state.”

In a three-way race excluding DeSantis, who still has yet to formalize his candidacy, Trump gets 79% against declared candidates Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, Haley garnered 16% support, and Ramaswamy managed just 6%. A full 69% of DeSantis supporters moved to Trump in the scenario where he does not run.

There was one piece of relatively good news for DeSantis in the Emerson College poll. While Trump ties President Joe Biden in a hypothetical General Election survey, with each taking 44%, DeSantis ekes out a 3-point lead over the President, 46% to 43%. The larger poll contained 1,153 voter responses.

The Emerson College poll shows a radically different result from another recent poll of the race. The Florida Governor has 52% support in the University of North Florida Public Opinion Research Lab survey of the race, 25 points ahead of Trump. Meanwhile, a January survey by Suffolk University and USA Today found Trump was the choice of 47% of those surveyed, while DeSantis was preferred by 40%.

Emerson College polling has shown a Trump lean in other Primary states. A recent New Hampshire poll showed the former President up 41 points, one of his biggest leads in any recent single state poll.

That said, Trump is sharpening his attacks on DeSantis and localizing them: a Truth Social post this week hammered DeSantis for the state’s property insurance crisis, calling Florida’s “the worst insurance scam in the country.”