America's Talking - Trump, DeSantis Both Virtually Tied With Biden in Potential Faceoff

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

Former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron Desantis are virtually tied with President Joe Biden in theoretical head-to-head matchups heading into the 2024 presidential campaign, according to new polling data. The Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll, conducted in conjunction with Noble Predictive Insights, found that in a faceoff, Trump has 41% support compared to Biden’s 44% support, while 15% remain unsure. DeSantis does slightly better, with 41% support to Biden’s 43% and 16% unsure. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me again today, as he does each and every week, is Casey Harper, the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. How are you, Casey? Doing good, Dan. How are you? I am doing well. I'm actually on the road, stopping in Little Rock, Arkansas, on my way to Huntsville, Texas, dropping my daughter off back off at college, Sam Houston State. She'll be a junior this year. year. Only six-hour drive to go after being in the car for about 11 hours yesterday. Wow. So good road trip so far. Do you have any road trip traditions? Not really. Get there as quickly as I can have. Okay. Speeding. Is that a road trip tradition? I, you know, I try to keep it not much more than 10 miles per hour over the speed limit, although my daughter might disagree with with that. But we had a good trip yesterday. Not too

much traffic. Just going to be happy to get there later today. Anyway, Casey, we have some exciting news to share today. We are recording this on Friday, August 18th. Casey, I'm excited to share with our listeners that the Center Square has teamed up with Noble Predictive insights to launch a new national poll. Mike Noble, owner and CEO of Noble predictive, is among the best pollsters in the country and earlier this month, the beginning of August. He and his team surveyed 2,500 American voters, 1,000 registered Democrats, 1,000 registered Republicans, 500 independents, and you've started writing about the results of those polls at thecentersquare.com. Yeah, that's right. This was a really interesting poll, a cool step for the center square.

If people want to see more about it, they can go to thecenter square.com. We have, you know, multiple articles diving into it. And as you said, this, you know, this evenly surveyed Republicans and independent and Democrats, sometimes these polls will have secretly surveyed more Democrats or more Republicans and then the poll can be kind of skewed. So I appreciate that about it. There's some really interesting takeaways though, Dan. I think top of the list on those is the poll asked voters about some of the most likely potential faceoffs, right? So it asked people who they would choose between Trump and Biden and DeSantis and Biden. So the two, you know, first and second place in the Republican primary race, how would they fare against the incumbent

President Joe Biden? And what the poll found is it's basically a tie, basically a tie between whichever Republican ends up going against Biden. People are pretty much either they want the Republican candidate, DeSantis, and Trump or Trump, or they want Biden, right? And there are plenty of undecides in there, but I think that's a really interesting development that we've come to between where Trump and DeSantis are somewhat seen interchangeably at the general election level. I'm not sure what you take away from that. I mean, I think to me, honestly, that's kind of not great for DeSantis because there's so many people who are never Trumpers that you would think that DeSantis would be able to kind of build more of a lead out against Biden. But I think especially with older voters, they trend more towards Biden.

and DeSantis hasn't been able to build any kind of gap, even setting aside his problems in the Republican primary. Yeah, that is an interesting takeaway, Casey. Of course, former President Trump is crushing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and all of the competition currently in polling in the GOP primary, even in the Center Square Voters Voice poll, which is what we're calling it. But Trump himself also faces four criminal indictments. It could be spending campaign season in the courtroom instead of on the campaign trail. For me, the poll shows that then even if Trump has to bow out, is forced to bow out, that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis does equally well against Biden, even though he's trailing Donald Trump in the GOP primary by 20 plus percentage points, if if voters choose the if Republican voters choose that or say that these indictments against Trump

are are not good and the first primaries are in January of course we still have five or so months before voters actually go to the polls to start deciding that DeSantis is in the wings and could prove to be a decent matchup against Biden himself yeah that's right and you You know, there is also the question of enthusiasm in voter turnout, right? There's plenty of people who will, you know, when they're taking a survey, answer something, but they may not be as enthusiastic about it. And if something comes up on election day, they may not make it to the polls, right? So I think Trump has a lot of the enthusiasm in the Republican base, but he's turned off a lot of independence. But so DeSantis, though, I think could have a better chance of getting some of those never-trumpers. He would just have to work to. to create that same enthusiasm in the Republican base that Trump has been able to maintain for so many years. So your story on the campaign and how voters feel about the candidates, both President Biden on the Democratic side, and former President Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, and the large field of Republican candidates, that is now available at the Center Square.com.

but we have plenty of stories yet to come off of the poll. Casey, we surveyed 2,500 American voters on issues such as the border, such as the fentanyl crisis, such as the economy, such as educational issues, those stories, government spending and how Americans feel about government spending and inflation, those stories are yet to come. Yeah, I mean, we have more, people should definitely check back at the Senate. Square.com, I think just to give you a few, few more takeaways before we wrap up here that I found more interesting. Trump beats Biden with Hispanic voters by five points. You know, so Trump has been called a racist and a racist specifically against Hispanics because of his border policies for many,

many years. But he's, at least for now, he beats Biden by five points, which is really notable, you know, especially because certain swing states like Arizona are heavily Hispanic. I mean, it's like a third Latino in Arizona, for instance. So that's not a small, not a small number. In the Republican primary field, I'll just go through the list really quickly. DeSantis has 18%. This is alphabetical. So Trump has 53% support in the Republican primary field. Tim Scott, I'll actually do an order. So Mike Pence on this poll comes in third at 7%. Vivek Romo-Swamy comes in fourth at 6%. Tim Scott and Nikki Haley. the South Carolina, uh,

Senator and governor respectively come in next at four percent. And then, uh, you know, Chris Christie's at one percent. And then there's several candidates like Larry Elder, Aza Hutchinson, Francis Juarez and others who have zero percent or at least less than half.

Less than one percent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so they can't round up basically to one. But, um, so that's kind of the lay of the Republican field.

As you said, Trump is crushing it. And, uh, you know, we do have an upcoming presidential debate, which could shake things up a little bit. But right now, Trump's not going to appear to a debate, which is an interesting development. Look forward to our reporting at the centersquare.com on the debate. And listeners can daily for the next two weeks look for stories on the Center Square voters' voices poll at the CenterSquare.

But Casey, we are out of time. Thank you for your insight into this story. Voters can keep up with this story and more and all of the polling stories at thecenter square.com for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McLeod. Thank you for listening and please subscribe.