Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis leads former President Donald Trump in an early 2024 Republican presidential primary poll, Axios reports.
A Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that 41% of GOP voters would prefer to see DeSantis as the
Nominee compared to 39% who prefer Trump.
Among all voters, 23% said they prefer DeSantis while 20% prefer Trump — but 41% of voters would prefer that neither man win the nomination.
The poll marks a reversal from last month, when 35% of Republicans preferred DeSantis and 45% preferred Trump.
Trump rages:
Trump has increasingly hit out at DeSantis amid rumors that he plans to challenge him for the presidential nomination.
Trump in a lengthy statement derided him as “DeSanticmonious” and suggested he was disloyal.
"Ron came to me in desperate shape in 2017—he was politically dead, losing in a landslide ..." Trump said in the statement. "Ron had low approval, bad polls, and no money, but he said that if I would Endorse him, he could win."
"When I Endorsed him, it was as though, to use a bad term, a nuclear weapon went off," he continued. "I also fixed his campaign, which had completely fallen apart."
"This is just like 2015 and 2016, a Media Assault (Collusion!), when Fox News fought me to the end until I won, and then they couldn’t have been nicer or more supportive,” he added.
Fox News boosts DeSantis:
DeSantis also appears to be leading the Fox News primary after Trump’s candidates disappointing in the midterms. Fox News pundits and columnists at other right-wing publications owned by Rupert Murdoch have increasingly slammed Trump while touting DeSantis as the future of the party.
“Rupert Murdoch… was pretty sick of Trump after Nov. 3, 2020, and said to a confidant, ‘We should throw this guy over.’ So I don’t think he can count on Fox the same way and Fox is clearly DeSantis-curious, right?” said The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman. “You’re seeing a fair amount of that if there is that primary.”
