Poll: Ron DeSantis at new low in polling of Massachusetts Republicans

Gov. Ron DeSantis filed this week for what he calls the “very, very important” Republican Presidential Primary in Massachusetts. Yet new polling says he’s far behind front-runner Donald Trump in the winner-take-all competition for the Bay State’s 40 delegates in the March 5 election.

The just-released University of Massachusetts Amherst/WCVB October 2023 Massachusetts Poll shows Trump leading the Florida Governor, 54% to 15%. Nikki Haley is marginally behind DeSantis, with 12% support, triple what she had last time this poll was conducted.

DeSantis has lost ground in successive surveys from this pollster. He had 18% support in April 2023, and 24% support in June 2022. Trump remains resilient, above 50% in all three polls.

The Governor said Monday that while running in the state is “tough sledding” in the General Election, it is nonetheless “very, very important” in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

“We’re going to put in the work and going to get it done,” DeSantis vowed, on the same day his campaign raked in $500,000 from well-heeled Boston donors.

The Governor, who attended Harvard Law School and therefore lived in Cambridge for a time, has had plenty to say about the state throughout the course of this campaign, both good and bad.

The most positive comments he’s had to make thus far have been about the Boston Red Sox, a team he became a bandwagon fan of when he lived in the state.

“That was unlike anything I’ve seen in Florida because, you know, the Bucs have won a couple of Super Bowls. We’ve had other teams do. Well, we’ve had a lot of great college football and people get excited, don’t get me wrong, but this was just in the bloodstream in New England. And I’ve never seen so many people be so revved up and when they won it, it was like such a big deal,” he said about the team’s World Series championship in 2004.

However, he had less positive comments to make about undocumented immigrants displacing fans who may want to attend December’s Army-Navy Football Game, to be held in Foxboro.

“Could the elites make it any clearer that they think that hardworking American citizens should come last? I mean, you’re talking about people that are serving on active duty or veterans. These are folks that we should be honoring. And instead, they’re being put to the back of the bus for people that came across, came into this country illegally and are being housed,” DeSantis fumed on a recent Howie Carr Show.

He also commented on people from the state moving to New Hampshire, suggesting the transplants might impact the Live Free or Die State’s political culture.

“You know, normally when I go north, I end up in less hospitable environments for taxes. But you got this little sea of red in New England, the Live Free or Die state where they don’t tax you to smithereens. So good.”

“You’ve just got to watch all these Massachusetts people moving here. Hopefully it doesn’t change that,” DeSantis said at an event hosted by the Never Back Down super PAC.