Poll: Trump, DeSantis Hold Leads Over Biden

Former President Donald Trump leads President Joe Biden by 5 percentage points in a hypothetical matchup of the 2024 presidential election, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis leads Biden by 4 percentage points, according to a nationwide poll released Wednesday.

The poll by the Marquette University Law School of 1,010 adults nationwide taken from May 8-18, before DeSantis officially announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination, showed Trump with a 52%-47% lead over Biden and DeSantis with a 52%-48% over the Democrat.

The poll has a margin of error of +/- 3.7 percentage points.

The poll showed Biden had a job approval rating of 40%, and 60% of those polled had an unfavorable view of him. Among Republican candidates, 59% had an unfavorable view of Trump and 47% had an unfavorable view of DeSantis. Trump had a slightly higher favorable rating than Biden (38%-37%). DeSantis’ favorable rating was 30%, but 23% of those polled said they haven’t heard enough about him to form an opinion.

As has been revealed in other polls, most people prefer to see Biden and Trump sit out the 2024 presidential race. It showed 74% would not like to see Biden and 64% would not like to see Trump run again.

The poll included 377 registered Republican primary voters, and Trump had support among 46% of those polled. DeSantis was next with 25%, followed by Nikki Haley (5%), Vivek Ramaswamy (4%), and former Vice President Mike Pence, who has yet to announce his candidacy, with 2%. The margin of error for this portion of the poll is +/- 6.1 percentage points.

Trump’s favorability rating rose among registered Republican voters from the law school’s last poll, taking from March 13-22. Trump had a 66% favorability rating in that poll, and it is now 72% in the latest poll. Trump has seen a significant boost to his poll numbers since he was charged April 4 with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Meanwhile, DeSantis has seen his poll numbers drop. In the March poll, DeSantis had a 69% favorability rating, but it was down to 56% in the new poll, although more people in the latest poll (24%) said they had not heard enough of him to form an opinion than in the last poll (15%).