Poll: Donald Trump Leads Hypothetical Republican Primary Race

Former US President Donald Trump speaks at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, US,
Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Hannah Knudsen

Former President Donald Trump is leading in the hypothetical 2024 Republican primary race among GOP voters, a recent survey from The Economist/YouGov found.

The survey asked, “If you had to choose, who would you most prefer to be the Republican nominee for President in 2024?”

Among Republicans, specifically, Trump leads with 36 percent support. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis comes in second with 30 percent support, followed by Donald Trump Jr. (9 percent), former Vice President Mike Pence (8 percent), and Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Ted Cruz, and former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, all of whom garnered three percent each. Another seven percent remain unsure:

Trump also has a two-point edge among all respondents, but 29 percent remain unsure across the board.

The survey was taken November 26-29, 2022, among 1,500 U.S. adult citizens and has a +/- 3.2 percent margin of error.

It comes weeks after Trump announced his 2024 presidential bid, unveiling his “American Greatness Agenda” during a speech at Mar-a-Lago. 

“This is what we call a National Greatness Agenda, because our country can be greater than it’s ever been,” Trump said.

“Our country is not great anymore. It’s a mess. But our country can be greater than it ever was before. There will be more, much more in the months ahead—and there are so many things we need to do. The road ahead of us will not be easy,” he warned, vowing to keep the U.S. out of “foolish and unnecessary foreign wars” and push for a Constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress, among other things.

However, speculation has continued to bubble around the prospect of Gov. Ron DeSantis throwing his hat in the presidential ring, prompting a series of preemptive strikes from Trump. 

“I don’t know if he is running. I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly. I really believe he could hurt himself badly,” Trump told Fox News Digital. “I think he would be making a mistake, I think the base would not like it — I don’t think it would be good for the party.”‘

He went on to criticize DeSantis — deeming him “Ron DeSanctimonious” in a statement and on TruthSocial, accusing him of “playing games.” 

The Fake News asks him if he’s going to run if President Trump runs, and he says, ‘I’m only focused on the Governor’s race, I’m not looking into the future.’ Well, in terms of loyalty and class, that’s really not the right answer…” he said.

Trump also “retruthed” a post which stated that Trump “masterfully started this fake ‘fight’ with DeSantis to reveal the Deep State RINO scum and puppets.” 

DeSantis, notably, has not said whether or not he intends to run in 2024 and remarked that “people just need to chill out” when asked about the supposed “civil war” between himself and the former president.

“We just finished this election,” DeSantis told reporters. “People just need to chill out a little bit on some of this stuff.” 

“I mean, seriously. We just ran an election,” DeSantis added. “We have this Georgia (Senate) runoff coming, which is very important for Republicans to win that Georgia runoff.”

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