In particular, among key voter groups he’ll need to unseat former President Donald Trump next year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ pre-campaign campaign for president has hit rough patches.
Polls show Trump dominating his likely primary competitor among GOP voters in the so-called “beer track” — a shorthand for the cultural and socioeconomic characteristics of the bloc of voters with lower incomes and levels of educational attainment. While DeSantis is still the preferred candidate of high-income voters and those with college degrees, he is showing signs of bleeding there, too. In recent weeks, Trump’s numbers have been rising among all Republicans, including with GOP voters most skeptical of his candidacy in the so-called “wine track.”
Take, for example, this week’s Quinnipiac University poll which shows Trump leading DeSantis, 46 percent to 32 percent, with the other candidates each registering 5 percent or less. Trump had just a 6-point lead in Quinnipiac’s poll last month.
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Trump has a 17-point lead among Republicans without a college degree (up from a 10-point lead in February). And while DeSantis still leads among voters with a four-year degree, 40 percent to 28 percent, Trump has significantly cut into what was a 29-point deficit with those voters in the past month.
Even were he not able to make inroads on DeSantis’ turf, Trump has an inherent advantage. A decades-long realignment has pushed college-educated voters toward Democrats — an already-existing trend that Trump accelerated — making the GOP’s “beer track” the larger cohort among Republican primary voters. Such divides defined the 2016 GOP presidential primary, propelling Trump to a once-unlikely nomination and, ultimately, the presidency.
It’s obviously still early in the 2024 contest: DeSantis isn’t even a declared candidate yet, and most of the new polls were conducted prior to the news that Trump may soon face criminal charges in New York related to an alleged hush-money payment he made during his 2016 campaign to hide an extramarital affair. Other potential legal troubles loom on the horizon.
Moreover, though the overall trends have been good for Trump, there’s little consensus in the national polling, with some surveys showing him and DeSantis essentially neck-and-neck, while others suggest the former president has a firm grasp on his third straight GOP nomination.
But even if the campaign hasn’t officially started, the recent polling trends do provide positive data for Trump and troubling numbers for DeSantis.
Of the three major media and academic surveys released in the past two weeks — from CNN, Monmouth University and Quinnipiac University — two of them have trend data showing a Trump bump over the past month.
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In addition to the Quinnipiac survey, the Monmouth poll released this week showed Trump leading the Florida governor by 1 point, erasing a 13-point, head-to-head disadvantage with DeSantis compared to the school’s February poll. (Similarly, among the full field of candidates, Trump led DeSantis by 14 points in the new poll, compared to a tie last month.)
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Some of the most dramatic swings toward Trump came among the groups where DeSantis had his biggest advantages. In the February Monmouth poll, DeSantis’ lead over Trump in the two-way matchup was 28 points among voters who make $50,000 a year or more. But he only leads Trump now by 2 points in this group, a 26-point swing. (Trump has a double-digit lead among Republican voters making less than $50,000 a year.)
But according to the Monmouth survey, DeSantis continues to have a sizable edge over voters with college degrees (62 percent to 30 percent), which is similar to his advantage over them last month.
DeSantis fared better in a CNN survey released last week, which showed the two candidates neck and neck. While other candidates gained significant support from this group, notably former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (14 percent) and former Vice President Mike Pence (10 percent), DeSantis outperformed Trump among white voters with college degrees by 18 points (8 percent).
There is also a sizable sample, rolling tracking poll from the website Morning Consult, which highlights some of the discrepancies between the results of the public surveys while still showing a trend favoring Trump and shows him with a considerably greater — and expanding — advantage over DeSantis.
Even though Republicans still have the same class difference as they did in 2016, polls indicate it is now much more pronounced. Trump received support from 47 percent of voters without a college degree in the 28 states where TV networks commissioned entrance or exit polls during the 2016 caucuses and primaries, compared to 35 percent of those with a degree.
The fact that the beer track vote is increasing as a percentage of the GOP electorate may be even better news for Trump. Republican primary and caucus attendees in recent elections have tended to be college graduates, but bigger political realignments will likely result that in most states next year, GOP voters without college degrees will outnumber those with degrees.
Several significant variations exist between 2016 and 2024. Trump ran as the outsider candidate in his first election, but he now has a bigger support base among Republican Party loyalists. He leads DeSantis by 18 points among those who identify as “strong Republicans” in the Monmouth survey, but falls behind among independents who lean Republican.
Likewise, the most conservative voters are now those who favor Trump the most. He has a 25-point advantage over DeSantis when surveyed as a head-to-head matchup in the Monmouth poll, and he leads DeSantis by 21 points among “extremely conservative” voters in the Quinnipiac poll.
In contrast, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who finished second, defeated Trump 41 percent to 37 percent in the combined entrance and exit polls in 2016.
The gender divide in 2016 is also not immediately visible this time around, at least not yet. According to entrance and exit polls, Trump defeated Cruz by 19 points among men in 2016, compared to a 10-point Trump edge among women.
But, Trump performs equally well, if not better, among women in the most recent 2024 polls. Trump leads women more than males in each of the three most recent polls, conducted by CNN, Monmouth, and Quinnipiac, albeit these differences are not necessarily statistically significant. In the primary polls, Haley, the only woman to register her candidacy, does better with female voters.
Currently, however, class is the division that has the greatest potential to shape the Republican primary in 2024. Expect neither the “beer track” nor the most intelligent Republicans to support Trump in droves. Yet, any noticeable changes among these groups in the upcoming months could be decisive.
SOURCE: CNN
