Former President Donald Trump has frequently hinted at another run for president in 2024. For example, in a video from January he referred to himself as the “45th and 47th” president.
Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has refused to rule out a run for president — setting up a potential clash between the two conservative political stars.
“I’m not considering anything beyond doing my job,” he said on Hannity in September, sidestepping the question. “We got a lot of stuff going on in Florida.”
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Unlike DeSantis, other presidential hopefuls have committed to stepping aside in the event of another Trump campaign. According to CNN, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley told reporters last year that she “would not run if President Trump ran.”
Naturally, pollsters have been putting Trump and DeSantis against each other… and they just found a shocking result.
Rasmussen Reports surveyed 1,000 likely voters between Sunday and Monday. According to the Washington Examiner, the survey found Trump and DeSantis tied with the same approval rating among likely voters. They’re each polling at 52 percent.
Rasmussen estimates the margin of error at 3 percent.
DeSantis also enjoys a “very favorable” rating of 37 percent, compared to Trump’s 35 percent. Plus, DeSantis boasts a much lower disapproval rating: 33 percent, compared to Trump’s 45 percent.
However, Trump still remains more popular among Republicans. In that regard, he’s polling at 83 percent favorability, against the governor’s 76 percent favorability. Plus, he would win 59 percent of primary voters in a hypothetical matchup against DeSantis, according to the survey.
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Still, the survey looks like a win for DeSantis overall.
After all, Trump has been trending downward. His popularity among Republicans is declining somewhat, with 71% saying they have a favorable opinion of Trump in January compared with 78% in a September 2020 AP-NORC/USAFacts poll. But the new poll shows only a narrow majority of Republicans — 56% — want him to run for president in 2024. The poll found that 44% of Republicans do not want Trump to run.
The former president still devotes many of his press releases to an election from two years ago, even as voters shift their priorities amid an inflationary spike at home.
But why choose? The Washington Examiner speculated about a Trump-DeSantis ticket.
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article.