A new poll shows Donald Trump topping the list of likely 2024 Republican nominees, reflecting his enduring control of the GOP despite rising stars like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other new party leaders who are likely to challenge him for the White House.
Multiple federal investigations and the tax fraud conviction of his real estate empire have failed to dissuade a plurality of likely Republican voters from siding with Trump, according to a new Morning Consult survey published on Wednesday.
Forty-eight percent of respondents said they want the former president to top the GOP ticket for a third time.
He beats out DeSantis, who is the runner-up with 31 percent support, by a wide 17-point margin.
It comes after multiple polls suggested DeSantis could edge out Trump as the Republican favorite – though it’s still much too early to tell.
Though the Florida governor has not explicitly shared interest in running for the White House in 2024, his refusal to rule out a potential primary challenge to Trump has infuriated the former president.
In a podcast appearance on the right-wing show The Water Cooler earlier this week, Trump dismissed DeSantis as a legitimate challenger and took credit for his narrow 2018 victory for the Tallahassee executive mansion – a race Trump endorsed in.
‘Now I hear he might want to run against me,’ the ex-president said on the program. ‘So we’ll handle that the way I handle things.’
