The Republican presidential race continues to shrink even before the first nominating contests. And it appears the former President Donald Trump is getting the biggest bump from the winnowing of the field.
A new Monmouth University national poll of 540 GOP and GOP leaning voters, conducted from Nov. 30 to Dec. 4, 2023, shows that no matter how questions are framed, a majority of Republicans want the former President to win the nomination for the third time.
"In an open-ended question asking Republican voters whom they would like to see as the GOP nominee for president, 53% name Trump. This top-of-mind preference has steadily climbed from a year ago when it stood at just 26%," the poll memo stated.
"In a subsequent question listing seven candidates in the race at the time the poll was taken, Trump's support stands at 58%. Far back in the pack are Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (18%), former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (12%), entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (4%), and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (2%)."
Trump's 58% is up 4 percentage points from July, while DeSantis fell from 22% in the same month. While Haley has improved by 9 points since July, that doesn't seem to translate into pollster confidence that she has enough runway to supplant the former President.
"We can parse these numbers until the cows come home, but the results don't look good for any candidate not named Trump. Certainly, there is always an outside chance of an upset in an early primary shaking things up, but most Republicans seem to anticipate an inevitable outcome," said Patrick Murray, Director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.
Murray also suggests that the problem for DeSantis, Haley, and the others is that GOP voters ultimately didn't want an open Primary like the party had in 2016.
"Most Trump voters feel he should have been given the deference of an incumbent. Among Republicans who want an alternative, though, there isn't really a clear sense that a viable contender has emerged who they can rally around."
No comments:
Post a Comment