Donald Trump approaches his biggest lead ever: Despite continuing legal woes, the former president has grown his lead in the Republican nomination contest
Donald Trump: He Dominates, Bottomline
Donald Trump has spent recent weeks on trial, in his state fraud case in New York, as criminal charges continue to pile up, and three of his former attorneys have agreed to cooperate against him just in the last week.
But despite that, or perhaps because of that, Donald Trump has grown his lead in the Republican nomination contest, according to one major poll.
According to the latest edition of the Morning Consult Tracking Poll, Trump now enjoys 61 percent support among Republican voters, which is just short of his highest total, 63 percent, since the poll launched nearly a year ago.
Trump also holds nearly a 50-point lead over the second-place Ron DeSantis. DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has just 13 percent support, while Nikki Haley is in third place with 7 percent, and Vivek Ramaswamy in fourth with 6 percent. They’re followed by Mike Pence (5 percent), and Chris Christie and Tim Scott (2 percent each.)
The third presidential debate of the Republican primary cycle is scheduled to take place next month in Miami, although Trump has already declared that he is not participating and hosting a nearby event that night, while Ramaswamy has also made noises about not coming to the debate. Trump’s campaign had earlier called for the remaining debates to be canceled.
The poll also shows Trump and President Biden tied at 43 percent, while most recent editions from Morning Consult have had Biden up by 1 or 2 points. But there is more alarming news for the incumbent president.
“Trump and Biden are tied at 43% in a hypothetical general election matchup,” Morning Consult said in their release. “But the GOP front-runner is beating the incumbent in the key battlegrounds of Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, while Biden leads Trump in Nevada and they’re tied in Michigan, according to surveys we conducted on behalf of Bloomberg News.”
Voters in those states remain unhappy with the state of the economy.
“Roughly 3 in 4 swing-state voters said the country’s economy is headed down the wrong track and they are more likely than not to say their personal financial situation was better off under Trump than it is under Biden,” the Morning Consult said. “It reveals that the president’s ‘Bidenomics’ pitch is not breaking through, as these voters are significantly more likely to trust his predecessor to handle their top voting issue.”
The poll also found that 86 percent of Biden voters from 2020 say they would vote for him again, while 91 percent of 2020 Trump voters say they would do the same.
There is other data in the poll indicating weakness in Biden’s “Bidenomics” pitch.
“Across the seven key swing states, 49% of voters said Bidenomics is bad for the economy — nearly twice the share who said it has been good,” the release said. “Even among swing-state voters who support his re-election bid, only 56% said Biden’s economic policies have been positive for the country, compared with 86% of Trump supporters who said it’s been negative.”
The latest RealClearPolitics average of the general election polls shows Trump ahead by an average of 0.7 percent. Several recent polls, including those of Morning Consult and USA Today/Suffolk, show the race tied. However, the recent Messenger/HarrisX poll has Trump leading by four points, as does a recent Harvard/Harris poll. Some other polls in mid-October had Biden ahead by a point or so, with the University of Virginia’s Center For Politics poll, not included in the RCP average, earlier this month showing Biden up by 4.
The race stands this way with Election Day 2024 just over a year away. And it’s incumbent on us to mention, as always, that a year is an eternity in politics, that many things could change between now and next November and no one in the world could have predicted the exact shape that the 2020 election would take.
Author Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Stephen has authored thousands of articles over the years that focus on politics, technology, and the economy for over a decade.
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