As CPAC Kicks Off in Orlando, New Poll Shows Florida Republicans Slightly Prefer DeSantis Over Trump for 2024
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The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) kicks off today in Orlando, Florida, and two of the state’s residents are the biggest headliners: former President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL).
New polling shows just how competitive their battle for the 2024 GOP presidential primary is likely to be.
The poll, conducted by the University of North Florida Public Opinion Research Lab, showed DeSantis with a slight advantage over Trump in a head-to-head matchup with Florida Republican primary voters. Just looking at the poll respondents who were registered Republicans (Florida is a closed primary state), DeSantis was picked by 44% and Trump by 41%. Two percent said they’d vote for someone else, 13 percent didn’t know or didn’t answer.
The overall poll surveyed 685 registered Florida voters between Feb. 7 through Feb. 20. The sample size was weighted for age, race, sex, party registration, education level, geographic areas of the state, and 2020 presidential election choices. Contact information was drawn from the state voter file, as of the December 2021 update, and included both landline and cell phone numbers. Questions were administered via live phone calls in both English and Spanish.
The margin of error for the overall sample was +/- 3.74 percentage points and +/- 6 points for just the Republican voter sample of 259 registered Republican voters.
Thus, DeSantis’ slim advantage over Trump is within the margin of error, but it is a result mirrored by other recent Sunshine State polls, as reported by Florida Politics’ A.G. Gancarski:
A survey conducted late last month by Suffolk University and USA Today found Trump was the choice of 47% of those surveyed, while DeSantis was preferred by 40% in that hypothetical head-to-head matchup.
A gender gap existed in that poll also for the Governor. DeSantis led Trump by one percentage point with male voters. Female voters, however, went for Trump 51% to 38%.
Still more localized polling confirms the statewide surveys.
A survey by St. Pete Polls measured opinion from 501 likely GOP voters in Florida’s 16th Congressional District, one of 27 House districts in Florida. DeSantis drew more than 43% support, as compared to just under 40% for Trump. That spread fell inside the poll’s 4.4 point MOE.
The poll also asked questions about the upcoming 2022 midterms and a question about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election:
As you may know, Donald Trump contested the results of the 2020 election through legal challenges in various states and the Supreme Court. Who do you think won the 2020 election – that is, who received the most votes cast by eligible voters in enough states to win the election?
In response to that question, and just looking at Republican voters, 15% said President Joe Biden “definitely won,” 14% said he “probably won,” 21% said Trump “probably won,” 43% said Trump “definitely won,” and 9% didn’t know or didn’t answer.
The competitive polling between DeSantis and Trump is likely to play out at CPAC this week. DeSantis delivers his keynote address shortly, scheduled for 1:30 pm ET Thursday afternoon, and Trump will speak Saturday at 7 pm ET.
On Sunday, the final day of CPAC, the straw poll results will be announced. At the most recent CPAC events — Orlando in Feb. 2021 and Dallas, Tex. in July 2021 — Trump was the victor, with DeSantis the clear favorite among non-Trump candidates.
