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Republican groups opposing Donald Trump have aired TV ads making the argument that the former president isn’t the party’s best general-election candidate to face President Joe Biden in November 2024.
It’s just that an overwhelming majority of GOP voters don’t buy that argument — at least for now.
According to a new national Monmouth University poll, a combined 69% of Republican voters say Trump is either “definitely strongest” (45%) or “probably strongest” (24%) to beat Biden.
That’s compared with a combined 31% of GOP voters who believe that another Republican would be “definitely stronger” (13%) or “probably stronger” (18%).
What’s more, the same Monmouth poll finds 47% of Republican voters saying they’re not at all concerned about the criminal indictments against Trump, while another 25% say they’re not too concerned.
By contrast, 27% say they’re very concerned (11%) or somewhat concerned (16%).
Not surprisingly given these numbers, the national Monmouth poll shows Trump with a significant lead over his GOP rivals.
When read a list of 14 different Republican candidates running for president, 54% say they support Trump the most — followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 22%; Vivek Ramaswamy at 5%; and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Vice President Mike Pence and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley all getting 3%.
(Due to the poll’s methodology and sample size, however, it is most likely the poll will not be used to qualify candidates for next month’s GOP presidential debate.)
When the Republican contest is reduced to just Trump and DeSantis, the former president gets support from 55% of GOP voters, while DeSantis gets 35%.
And when the matchup is Trump versus Scott, Trump gets 72% versus Scott at 23%.
The national Monmouth poll was conducted July 12-19 of 681 Republican registered voters, and it has a margin of error of plus-minus 5.9 percentage points.