Poll: Ron DeSantis trails Donald Trump by 25 points in Ohio

Ron DeSantis fends off attacks from all sides.

New polling brings bad news from the Buckeye State for Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign.

A survey from USA Today, conducted between July 9 and July 12 by Suffolk University, shows the Florida Governor trails Donald Trump by more than a 2-to-1 margin among Ohio Republicans.

Trump has 48% of the vote, 25 points ahead of DeSantis’ 23%. The rest of the field is much further back, including U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina (5%); former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Vice President Mike Pence (4% each); and Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson and Vivek Ramaswamy (2% each).

The other Florida man in the race, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, has no support among the 190 Republican Primary voters polled in the larger survey of 468 Ohio voters.

The polling also shows DeSantis underperforming Trump in a potential General Election matchup against President Joe Biden, Green Party candidate Cornel West, and an “independent candidate.”

Trump carries Ohio against Biden 44% to 38%, with 2% for West and 9% for the independent.

DeSantis also has an edge in Ohio against Biden, but it’s smaller, at 39% to 37%. There, West again gets 2%, and 10% say they want the unnamed independent.

In what could be called good news for the Governor, the USA Today Primary poll is better for DeSantis than one from East Carolina University in June. That survey saw Trump leading DeSantis 59% to 15%.

DeSantis has made political appearances in Ohio this year, albeit before the formal launch of his presidential campaign. He visited the state while South Florida was dealing with historic flooding in the spring.

The Governor, addressing the Butler County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner, said in April that he represented so-called “Ohio values.”

“I can stand here representing Ohio values because the two most important women in my life (are from Ohio),” DeSantis said. “My mother is from Youngstown, and my wife is from Troy, and so my family reflects your family.”

The Governor also touted his Buckeye State ties in his memoir, “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.”

During a recent appearance touting the book with the Fox News Channel’s Mark Levin, 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.”