Former president Donald Trump remains by far the most popular contender in a field of would-be candidates for the 2024 Republican nomination for president, a new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll conducted for The Hill has revealed.
Among a field of eight prospective GOP candidates, Trump leads the field with 57 percent support among Republican primary voters. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is second with 12 percent, while former vice president Mike Pence is third with 11 percent support. None of the other potential candidates, including senators Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Tim Scott, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, managed to break double digit territory.
The poll also asked voters to pick a candidate for president should Trump decide not to run, with DeSantis enjoying 30 percent support, with Pence in second at 24 percent, and Ted Cruz in third place with 14 percent under such a scenario.
In public, Trump and DeSantis have sought to keep up the appearance of close, friendly ties, with the former president, saying in a recent interview with Fox that he has “a very good relationship with Ron and intend[s] to have it for a long time”. Privately, however, the former president has reportedly characterised the Florida governor as someone with “no personal charisma” and a “dull personality” amid concerns that DeSantis may try to challenge him in 2024. DeSantis has so far remained deferent to Trump, hinting repeatedly that he had no plans to challenge him.
Last week, media reported that anti-Trump Republicans on the one hand and former neocon members of his own administration on the other were trying to reduce his influence on the party ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. Trump and the Republican leadership have had a rocky relationship ever since he won the 2016 presidential primary and became president, with the billionaire real estate mogul halfheartedly attempting to challenge party and state dogmas on issues including US wars in the Middle East and relations with Russia.
Biden Polling
On the other side of the political aisle, Harvard CAPS/Harris found Joe Biden’s approval rating hitting a new low under its methodology, with 18 percent of registered voters saying they ‘strongly approve’ of his performance as president, 21 percent saying they ‘somewhat approve’, and 53 percent saying they ‘somewhat disapprove’ or ‘strongly disapprove’. The president’s approval rating is down from 45 percent in November, and is at its lowest level since Harvard CAPS/Harris began its polling last March.
The fresh data on Biden’s approval rating roughly matches that of other major US pollsters. However, some have posted figures that are even more grim, with a recent Morning Consult/Politico survey showing a 56 percent disapprove/40 percent approve rating, while a Quinnipiac poll showed his approval standing at just 33 percent – the same low rating Trump had when he left office in 2021.
Last month, a Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll of a hypothetical Biden-Trump rematch found that 44 percent of Americans would vote for Trump, while 38 percent would pick Biden. That’s a dramatic reversal from the results of the November 2020 vote, in which Biden handily defeated his Republican opponent 51.3 percent to 46.9 percent. Trump and his supporters have repeatedly claimed that the election was “stolen” from the incumbent through the use of rigged voting machines and mail-in ballot dumps in key swing states, but state and federal courts have refused to hear the claims.