The federal indictment against former President Donald Trump doesn’t seem to be eroding his support among conservatives. New polling shows “Teflon Don” continues to hold a substantial lead over his closest Republican presidential nomination rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, in Iowa — the first-in-the-nation caucus state — and the rest of the nation.
A poll by Victory Insights shows Trump leading DeSantis by 23 points in Iowa, 44.3 percent to 21.3 percent in a full-ballot contest. When the field is narrowed to just Trump and DeSantis, the spread between the two candidates decreases, but not by much. Trump (48.6 percent) maintains a 16.2 percent lead over the governor (32.4%), with 19 percent of the electorate still undecided, according to the poll.
The survey of 450 likely Republican caucus participants (margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percent) was conducted June 3-6, just two days after word broke that Trump was being indicted on 37 federal felony counts related to his handling of alleged classified documents. The former president was arraigned earlier this week in federal court in Miami, marking his second indictment of the year. Trump and many congressional Republicans assert the indictments are driven by politically weaponized law enforcement agencies in the Biden administration and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, seeking to knock off Biden’s top political adversary.
U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) is a distant 3rd in the poll, with 6 percent support of surveyed Iowa voters, followed by recently announced candidate, former Vice President Mike Pence (5 percent), former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (4.8 percent), former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (2.7 percent), and Ohio businessman Vivek Ramaswamy (1.9 percent).
Ben Galbraith, a senior pollster at Florida-based Victory Insights, said the new poll “writes the next chapter in our 2024 story.” His polling summary strikes a combative tone.
“Trump maintains a significant lead over DeSantis in Iowa for the 2024 GOP nomination,” the pollster wrote. “Notably, our results contrast with the results released recently by Never Back Down, a [super] PAC supporting DeSantis. Never Back Down reported a 10-point margin between the two frontrunners …”
He goes on to note that Victory Insight’s 2024 polls are not funded by the Trump or DeSantis campaigns. Instead, the firm conducts its polls as “a way to gauge national and state-specific trends and advise our private clients on big-picture strategy.” Just who those clients are remains unclear.
As The Star News Network has previously reported, the Victory Insights poll does not include a topline, methodology, and key demographic information, raising questions about its validity.
Never Back Down did not release standard background information on its Iowa poll, either. That didn’t stop multiple media outlets from reporting on its purported results.
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is closing the gap on former President Donald Trump in the early nominating state of Iowa, according to an internal poll out this week,” the New York Post reported on June 6.
The survey by WPA Intelligence for Never Back Down claimed the Florida governor was in a virtual tie with the former president in a head-to-head contest. Trump had 45 percent support from Republican voters, while DeSantis had 43 percent, with 12 percent undecided.
But new national polling shows frontrunner Trump still far ahead of the field.
A Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey released exclusively to The Hill on Friday found 59 percent of Republican voters said that if the GOP primary were held today, they would vote for Trump, while 14 percent said the same about DeSantis. Eight percent of GOP voters said they would vote for Pence, and 4 percent said they would back former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.
The survey was conducted this week, June 14-15, The Hill reported, and surveyed 2,090 registered voters. It is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and the Harris Poll. As a representative online sample, it does not report a probability confidence interval.
Trump’s campaign reported raising $6 million since news of his indictment broke.
Meanwhile, a NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National Poll finds eight in 10 Republicans say Trump should remain in the presidential race. The survey found 56 percent of respondents — the majority of them Democrats and independents — believe the former president should drop out of the presidential race, with 43 percent saying he should remain in the contest. But 83 percent of Republicans questioned continue to support Trump’s run for the White House. Perhaps not surprisingly, 87 percent of Democrats think he should drop out, with 58 percent of independents feeling the same way.
“As former President Trump deals with his latest legal woes, Republicans are mostly standing with him, while Democrats are calling for him to exit the 2024 campaign,” Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, said Friday in a press release. “Time will tell if this pattern holds, but for now, Republicans are grounded on where they stand on Trump regardless of these unfolding events.”
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Donald Trump” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0. Photo “Ron DeSantis” by Governor Ron DeSantis. Background Photo “U.S. Capitol” by PartTime Portraits.
