Former President Donald Trump continues to be the favorite presidential candidate among Republican voters, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is dropping.
As Breitbart News reported on Saturday, Trump is the top choice to be the GOP nominee among 59% of voters in the latest Morning Consult poll, released last week.
Trump leads DeSantis by 46 points, the poll revealed.
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Trump’s support has jumped by nine points since December.
On the other hand, over that same period, backing for DeSantis has plunged 17 points, from 30% to 13%.
DeSantis remains the strong second choice after Trump among the GOP faithful. He was chosen by 33% of respondents, compared to 24% for businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.
But where Trump is outshining DeSantis is on the question of favorability.
The Morning Consult survey found that 80% of respondents have a favorable view of Trump, compared to 19% who replied that he was unfavorable to them.
As for DeSantis, 67% of GOP voters have a favorable view of Florida’s governor, while 21% view him unfavorably.
With that outcome, DeSantis now has the highest unfavorability rating among the four leading candidates, including Trump, Ramaswamy and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. The latter two were seen unfavorably by 18% and 20% of respondents, respectively.
Among the 10 declared Republican candidates, only former Vice President Mike Pence (42%) and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (51%) have higher unfavorable scores than DeSantis, according to the Morning Consult poll.
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But the good news for DeSantis is that despite being seen less favorably than the other main challengers is that his favorability gap is trending back up.
The current poll revealed the gap between his favorable-unfavorable numbers was 46 points (67% favorable versus 21% unfavorable).
That’s DeSantis’ biggest margin on the favorable-unfavorable question since Aug. 5, when the gap measured 50 points.
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