A new Morning Consult poll shows former President Donald Trump widening the gap against his closest competitors, while former Vice President Mike Pence and Ohio entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy make some noise among the crowded field of Republican Party presidential hopefuls.
The poll, conducted June 23-25, finds frontrunner Trump at 57 percent, nearly 40 percentage points up on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (19 percent), his closest rival.
Tracking the 2024 GOP Primary:
Trump: 57%
DeSantis: 19%
Pence: 7%
Ramaswamy: 6%
Haley: 3%
Scott: 3%
Christie: 2%
Hutchinson: 1%
Burgum: 0%
Suarez: 0%
Hurd: 0%
Someone Else: 1%
*June 23-25, 2023We survey thousands of GOP primary voters every day: https://t.co/zpObC29kvJ pic.twitter.com/mcILAk7x17
— Morning Consult (@MorningConsult) June 27, 2023
“After eight years, Americans have made up their minds about former President Donald Trump. And it appears that not even a federal indictment is swaying them,” pollster FiveThirtyEight reported last week.
In the most recent RealClearPolitics average of GOP presidential primary polls, Trump holds a commanding 30.6 percentage point lead over DeSantis (52.1 percent to 21.5 percent)
The Morning Consult poll shows the rising fortunes of Trump’s former vice president and political outsider Ramaswamy.
Pence is polling at 7 percent; Ramaswamy is at 6 percent. They are followed by former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), both at 3 percent, former New Jersey Governor and avowed Trump hater Chris Christie (2 percent), and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (1 percent). Several others in the packed Republican Party primary contest are being outpolled by “Someone Else” — at 1 percent.
Ramaswamy, the youngest candidate in the field at 37, has seemingly been everywhere on the campaign trail. He’s made first-nominating states Iowa and New Hampshire second homes, and has taken his America First 2.0 campaign into inner city Chicago and Philadelphia and all over social media. The anti-woke warrior has used his presidential campaign to preach an American revival.
Pence, who launched his campaign praising and attacking his former running mate, took aim at the race’s No. 2 candidate this week.
In a piece published on Monday, Pence said DeSantis was “following in the footsteps of the radical left” in taking on Disney.<
“Another prominent example is Disney, a company that trumpeted its left-wing values by condemning conservative education and parental rights reforms in Florida. Governors around the country are right to pursue these policies and protect our kids,” Pence wrote, according to Fox News.
“But when the governor of Florida decided to launch a full-scale campaign of governmental retribution against Disney, he wasn’t taking a page out of the conservative playbook — he was following in the footsteps of the radical left,” he added.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Vivek Ramaswamy” by Vivek Ramaswamy and “Donald Trump” is by the White House.