FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — If Ron DeSantis is the Republican presidential nominee in 2024, a poll released Friday shows him doing better in Florida against President Joe Biden than Donald Trump would fare.
DeSantis, who is running for re-election, is a likely candidate, but he hasn’t said so thus far. Trump, the former president, has also made candidate-like moves, but hasn’t announced a candidacy.
In a hypothetical matchup, the Florida Atlantic University poll shows DeSantis leading Biden 48% to 42%, a difference of 6 percentage points.
Trump would lead Biden, 45% to 41%, a difference of 4 percentage points.
A Biden-Trump matchup is unappealing to 11% of the Florida voters surveyed. They said they’d prefer someone else. A smaller share, 5%, said they’d vote for someone else if faced with a Biden-DeSantis contest.
Undecided got 3% in the hypothetical Biden-Trump rematch and 5% in a Biden-DeSantis contest.
There’s a huge partisan divide.
For Biden vs. Trump, 79% of the the Democrats said they’d vote for Biden and 82% of Republicans said they’d vote for Trump.
Independents were evenly split, with 39% for Biden and 40% for Trump. Another 18% of independents said they’d vote for someone else — more than double the percentages of Democrats or Republicans who said they’d vote for someone else.
For Biden vs. DeSantis, 82% of Democrats would vote for Biden and 88% of Republicans said they would vote for DeSantis.
Among independents, 39% said they would vote for Biden and 43% for DeSantis, with 9% saying they’d prefer someone else.
The FBI search of Trump’s residence at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, in which the government seized classified documents he retained after he lost the presidency, boosted him among Republican voters.
Most of the Republicans polled — 57% — said the search of Mar-a-Lago made them more likely to support Trump if he runs for president. Another 11% said it made them less likely to support him and 32% said it made no difference.
Among Democrats, 16% said the search made it more likely they’d vote for Trump if he runs in 2024, 54% less likely, and 30% said it made no difference.
Among independent voters, 21% said the Mar-a-Lago search would make it more likely they’d vote for him, 40% less likely and 39% said it would make no difference.
The results come from an FAU Business and Economics Polling Initiative survey of 719 registered voters who said they were likely to vote.
Data was collected via cellphones, land lines and an online panel through the survey company Dynata. The numbers were weighted by ethnicity, age, education, party affiliation, region and gender, based on 2020 turnout modeling.
The margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.
The sample sizes for subgroups — such as Democrats or Republicans or people in different age groups — are smaller, so the margin of error is higher.
Pollster ratings from FiveThirtyEight.com give FAU an A/B rating based on the historical accuracy and methodology of its polls.
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