It appears Trump’s iron grip on the Republican base may finally be slipping. The most recent Yahoo!/YouGov poll has DeSantis beating Trump by 5 points, 47% to 42%.
It is a massive change from the same poll taken in mid-October, which gave Trump a 45% to 35% lead. DeSantis has an even more significant lead with voters who said they voted in the 2016 primary, easily defeating Trump 51% to 40%.
Still, Trump continues to enjoy the favor of those who consider themselves “strong Republicans,” leading DeSantis in that category 53% to 39%.
The poll, released Thursday, surveyed 1,653 adults from December 1 to 5. It also seems to show that some of DeSantis’ support is coming from Republicans tiring of Trump after a string of political setbacks and PR disasters. Voters that were undecided in the October poll seem to have overwhelmingly moved to DeSantis.
In October, 19% of voters said they were unsure who they would vote for between Trump and DeSantis. In the December poll, only 11% said they were either “Not sure” or “would not vote," the latter of which was not an option in the October poll. That indicates that roughly 8% of likely Republican primary voters made up their minds in those weeks and the vast majority of them picked DeSantis, who gained 11% in the same period.
Between the October and December polls, Trump-backed candidates underperformed in November’s midterm elections, including the high profile Senatorial race in Georgia where Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock defeated the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate Herschel Walker. While the run-off election in that race was conducted after the December poll, Walker had already underperformed compared to other Republicans on the statewide ballot.
Trump-endorsed candidates did win some competitive contests, but high-profile losses in key states for Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Blake Masters in Arizona may have made the former President look beatable to Republicans.
However, Trump's other recent actions might also be costing him some valuable political support.
Between the two polls, Trump was heavily criticized, even by Republicans, for having dinner with Nick Fuentes, a holocaust denier, and Ye, formerly Kanye West. Compounding the issue for Trump was an Alex Jones interview with Ye and Fuentes a few days later. In that interview, Ye went on an antisemitic rant and said that he “loves Nazis.”
The dinner, along with Trump’s refusal to condemn Ye and Fuentes after the interview, could be one cause for the former President’s fall in the polls.
Trump also stated on his social media site Truth Social that parts of the US Constitution should be “terminated” so he could be declared the winner of the 2020 Presidential election. That post drew criticism from multiple prominent Republicans.
And there are also Trump’s continually mounting legal issues, which all seem to be coming to a head at the same time.
It should be noted that the December YouGov poll is just one poll. A recent Big Village poll, taken in late November and early December still showed Trump with a large lead over DeSantis, 56% to 27%. The December YouGov poll also had Trump leading DeSantis if multiple other candidates were added to the poll.