Trump ahead of rival DeSantis in survey

Washington, Aug 1: Former US President Donald Trump has a 37-point advantage over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the Republican primary campaign, according to a recent poll. The New York Times/Sienna College poll found that among potential Republican primary voters, Trump leads DeSantis 54 to 17 per cent, with no other candidate receiving more than 3 per cent of the vote. DeSantis receives only 9 per cent and 13 per cent of the support, respectively, among voters aged at least 65 and those without a college degree, two of the major voting categories in the Republican Party. According to the poll, DeSantis received only 15 per cent of Republicans who identified as “very conservative” but who also supported Trump by a margin of 65 per cent. Republican voters nevertheless overwhelmingly supported Trump in a fictitious one-on-one contest with DeSantis after ruling out all other GOP contenders, with Trump receiving 62 per cent support to DeSantis’s 31 per cent. Other Republican candidates for the White House, such as former Vice President Mike Pence, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, and Sen. Tim Scott (SC), each won 3 per cent of the vote, while businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie each received 2 per cent. The survey, according to pollsters, showed Trump winning the GOP race in practically all demographic, geographic, and ideological groupings, including leads among a range of age groups,  education levels, gender, and those in suburbs, cities, and rural regions. This was despite Trump’s mounting legal issues. The survey of 1,329 registered voters, with an oversample of 818 of likely Republican primary voters, conducted July 23 to July 27, has a margin of error of 3.67 percentage points for all registered voters and 3.96 per cent points for GOP voters, reported The Hill. The 2024 United States presidential election will be the 60th quadrennial presidential election, scheduled for November 5, 2024.