A new poll found that former President Donald Trump is still beating Ron DeSantis, but the Florida governor made gains in narrowing the distance to the frontrunner in the primary race since announcing his presidential campaign.
The Reuters Ipsos poll was released Monday.
It showed that DeSantis garnered the support of 22% of self-identified Republicans for the GOP primary while Trump had 43% of their support.
That margin of 21 percentage points is far fewer than the margin in April when Trump had 58% support and DeSantis only had 21% support.
The popular Florida governor has since declared his presidential campaign and become the most popular alternative to Trump, the frontrunner.
The poll also found that a majority of Republicans, 81%, agreed that the indictment against Trump was politically motivated. 35% of Republicans also said that the charges against Trump related to documents being improperly kept at his Mar-a-Lago residence were believable.
A separate poll found similar results for DeSantis in Iowa, a key early voting state. The WPA Intelligence survey said that the Florida governor was in a virtual tie in a head-to-head contest with the former president, who had 45% support compared to 43% for DeSantis.
When respondents in that poll were asked to consider all the other GOP candidates, DeSantis garnered 29% of support while Trump garnered 39%.
Trump has lashed out at DeSantis by calling him disloyal and accusing him of having a worse record in relation to the coronavirus pandemic than Democratic governors. DeSantis has responded by accusing Trump of trying to hit at him from the left, especially on his fight against Disney.
“He was a hard charger leaning in on all the issues very edgy on conservative issues, and it was part of the reason he did so well,” said DeSantis in an interview in May.
“But when he’s taken Disney’s side against me, I just kind of wonder like, okay, I get he wants to hit me, but don’t take the side of a multinational corporation that wants to sexualize kids,” he added. “He’s also hitting me against voting against immigration amnesty.”
Here’s more about the GOP primary race:
DeSantis Touts New Iowa Poll Showing Him Gaining Ground On Trumpwww.youtube.com
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