The bad news doesn’t end there for Trump. In a hypothetical rematch of the 2020 election, the poll shows Biden once again defeating Trump, this time quite convincingly, 47%-40%. Things can certainly change as the 2024 election season has yet to begin, even though Trump already announced he would run. So far, things look ominous for Trump as he looks to become the first (and only) president since Grover Cleveland to serve two non-consecutive terms.
So with Trump currently down in the polls, does that mean Trumpism is dead? Far from it. David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, said the poll shows Trumpism is still popular; however, people want a different messenger.
“Republicans and conservative independents increasingly want Trumpism without Trump,” Paleologos said.
DeSantis, on the other hand, is on the rise. Respondents in this poll favor him over Trump by a large margin, 56% to 33%. If true, these numbers definitely represent a massive shift in Trump’s Republican support in just few short weeks. Until recently, Trump was considered not only the Republican frontrunner, but a prohibitive one.
Despite all the drama surrounding Trump’s numbers, the most encouraging numbers from this poll have nothing to do with him. In yet another positive sign for DeSantis, the poll shows he beats Biden in a hypothetical matchup, 47% to 43%. And while I find it shocking that Biden would still perform that well, his vulnerability at this point in the cycle is a good sign.
As for Trump, this is the latest in a string of recent polls that have him trailing DeSantis. And, as my colleague David Freddoso wrote, such results are becoming the rule, not the exception.
A Marquette University Law School poll showed DeSantis defeating Trump 55%-45% among Republican voters and 60%-40%% among independent Republican-leaning registered voters. Another, the YahooNews-YouGov poll also showed DeSantis leading Trump among Republican voters, this time 47%-42%. This starkly contrasted from before the midterms when Trump was significantly ahead of DeSantis, 45%-36%.
It is December 2022, and many things can happen between now and 2024. Heck, DeSantis only just won reelection last month, and he hasn’t said anything about running in 2024. Every poll discussing him, at this point, is purely speculative.
So what does this ultimately mean? It could mean a lot of things. However, at the moment, it just means Trump’s reputation has taken a hit. Only time will tell if he can recover.
Continue Reading at The Washington Examiner.