Poll: Joe Biden, RFK Jr. beat Ron DeSantis in Pennsylvania

While Ron DeSantis supporters believe he is the best Republican bet in 2024, new General Election polling from a key swing state suggests otherwise.

A fresh Pennsylvania survey from Susquehanna Polling shows the two leading Democratic candidates in 2024 would defeat DeSantis in November, assuming the Florida Governor receives the Republican nomination.

If President Joe Biden is, as expected, the nominee, he downs DeSantis 48% to 39%. DeSantis would have to convince the 9% of undecided voters to back him in that scenario, as 3% say they’d back someone else.

If Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wins the nomination, DeSantis still has ground to make up. RFK is the choice of 42% of those surveyed, with 38% backing the Florida Governor. Undecided voters make up 10% of the sample, and an additional 10% prefer another option.

The strong performance by the two most likely Democrats to win the nomination comes in spite of stronger-than-normal DeSantis performance in Keystone State polls.

An April survey from Franklin and Marshall College’s Center for Opinion Research, first reported by PoliticsPA, shows DeSantis pulling 34% support in a crowded field of GOP Primary candidates. That puts him just 6 points behind Donald Trump, a stronger performance than many recent state polls.

DeSantis took a trip to the Keystone State when the poll was administered in April. The Governor addressed Republicans at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference in Harrisburg, offering largely familiar remarks in a speech that was well-received by the GOP faithful.

The numbers suggest DeSantis’ Pennsylvania trip may have helped: In a March Public Policy Polling survey, 49% of respondents say they back Trump, with 31% saying they prefer the Florida Governor, so there was progress month to month.

In recent weeks, DeSantis has played up his 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.

During an appearance with Mark Levin on the Fox News Channel, DeSantis explained how the region’s values formed him and buoyed his innate sense of conservatism.

“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 offered a similar reminiscence in his best-selling book, “The Courage to be Free.”

“I was geographically raised in Tampa Bay,” DeSantis writes, “but culturally my upbringing reflected the working-class communities in western Pennsylvania and northeast Ohio — from weekly church attendance to the expectation that one would earn his keep. This made me God-fearing, hard-working and America-loving.”