Poll: Ron DeSantis 45 points behind Donald Trump in California

Ron DeSantis in San Francisco. Screenshot via DeSantis For President.

The 45th President has a 45-point lead ahead of the GOP Presidential Primary in the Golden State.

That’s the takeaway from the newest University of California Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies survey.

“The latest poll also finds former President Donald Trump expanding his previous huge lead over the rest of the GOP candidate field in the state’s March presidential primary,” reads a memo accompanying the results.

Trump has 57% support among the 1,234 likely Republican voters polled, a high-water mark for him.

Meanwhile, Gov. Ron DeSantis continues his decline among California Republicans, with 12% supporting his campaign. In August, DeSantis had 16% support. And in May, he had 26% backing.

“The fact that Trump’s support continues to exceed 50% is significant since according to state GOP rules for awarding delegates to the Republican National Convention, if any candidate secures more than half of the statewide Republican primary vote he or she would be awarded all of the state’s largest in the nation, 169 convention delegates,” the pollster notes.

Meanwhile, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is at 9% in this poll — up from 7% in August and just 3% in May — showing that in yet another poll, she is benefiting from DeSantis’ fade.

Other polls have been somewhat more favorable for DeSantis.

In a Data Viewpoint poll fielded Oct. 1, DeSantis had 18% support. He had 14% in a Public Policy Institute of California survey from September.

The Governor was in California earlier this fall for a presidential debate, where he made some other news as well, including being condemned by the Salinas City Council ahead of a fundraising event in the city.

On a trip to the Port of Long Beach, DeSantis was flanked by truck drivers as he made the case that California is the “petri dish of leftism” in the country. If elected President, he vowed to “take action” against California’s “electric mandates for big rigs.”

He spoke to the California Republican Convention, where he rehashed familiar gripes against the University of Florida’s football team, saying it could do a “little bit better” on the field.

DeSantis also appeared on Bill Maher’s HBO program, an appearance more notable for what the longtime comedian and talk show host said than anything else.

“If your campaign was going well, you wouldn’t be on this show,” Maher quipped, a seeming reference to the Governor’s penchant for friendly interviewers in recent years.

DeSantis has also used California as a public safety punching bag on the trail, both in the state and outside of it.

“When people are telling me that when they go shopping, they take off their jewelry because they don’t want to get mugged, even in nice places in L.A., that’s a huge, huge problem,” DeSantis said in Long Beach.

“I was just in San Francisco. I saw — in 20 minutes on the ground — people defecating on the sidewalk. I saw people using fentanyl. I saw people smoking crack right there in the open, right there on the street. It was a civilization in decay,” the Governor said at a Faith & Freedom Coalition event in June.

The Governor, while at a Never Back Down bus tour stop in Iowa, said his presidential administration would not “let California regulate how farmers in Iowa conduct their business on things like, you know, these pork producers have to follow California law to do this stuff.”

“It doesn’t even make any sense,” DeSantis said.

Earlier this year, in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a California law called Proposition 12, which mandates more room for breeding pigs. The court sided with the state against the National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation, industry groups that contended California law would impose unreasonable burdens on pig farmers.

Florida has similar protections in its Constitution, it should be noted.