GOP voters want a new standard-bearer in 2024 to push through the former president’s policies, a USA Today survey has found
Former President Donald Trump speaks at an election night event last month in Palm Beach, Florida. © Getty Images / Joe Raedle
Republican voters still identify with Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again agenda, but prefer that another candidate replaces the former president as the champion of those policies in the 2024 election, a new poll has revealed.
GOP and Republican-leaning voters want someone other than Trump – by a margin of nearly 2-to-1 (61%-31%) – to win the party’s nomination for president in 2024, according to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released on Tuesday. They also want that nominee to carry forward the policies that Trump promoted.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has emerged as the leading candidate to replace Trump. Republican voters prefer DeSantis by a 56-33 margin, the poll showed.
“There’s a new Republican sheriff in town,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center. “DeSantis outpolls Trump not only among the general electorate, but also among these Republican-leaning voters who have been the former president’s base. Republicans and conservative independents increasingly want Trumpism without Trump.”
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DeSantis, who won re-election as governor in a landslide in last month’s US midterm elections, hasn’t formally announced his candidacy for president in 2024. Trump threw his hat in the ring last month, despite disappointing performances by congressional and gubernatorial candidates whom he backed in the midterms. The former president was the GOP’s 2024 frontrunner as recently as August, before the party fared far worse than expected in the November elections.
In a hypothetical rematch between President Joe Biden and Trump, the incumbent Democrat would win by a 47-40 margin among all voters, according to USA Today/Suffolk University polling. On the other hand, DeSantis would defeat Biden by a 47-43 margin.
However, Paleologos noted that in a crowded Republican primary field, the anti-Trump vote would be divided among DeSantis and other candidates, potentially opening the door for the former president to win the party’s nomination.
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Among all voters, more than two in three Americans prefer that neither Trump nor Biden run for president in 2024. USA Today/Suffolk University has had a perfect record in predicting the outcome of seven key midterm races.
