(PartiallyPolitics.com) – A Monmouth poll released on Tuesday found that the majority of Republican voters believe that former President Donald Trump is the strongest nominee that the party has to defeat President Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election.
The phone and online poll was conducted between May 18 and 24 and included 655 voters who identified either as Republicans or leaning towards the Republican party. The poll had a 5.5. percentage points margin of error and was conducted before DeSantis’ official presidential announcement on Wednesday. According to the pool’s results, 45 percent of respondents claimed that Trump was “definitely” the strongest candidate while 18 percent claimed that he was “probably” the strongest candidate.
In a matchup between Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for the GOP nomination, 56 percent supported Trump while 35 percent supported DeSantis. This marks a big change from February when 53 percent had favored DeSantis and 40 percent had supported Trump. In March, Trump had managed to pull ahead of DeSantis but only with a narrow lead of 1 point, with 47 percent supporting Trump and 46 percent supporting DeSantis.
Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, argued that if your main argument to win Republican voters is that Trump is not the party’s strongest nominee against President Biden then there was a long hill to climb ahead in order for you to convince voters. He added that even if you manage to convince everyone who thinks that Trump is “probably” the strongest candidate you are still unlikely to capture enough of the Republican electorate to defeat Trump’s “hardcore base support.”
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