Donald Trump has a big lead in a new NBC News poll of the Republican presidential primary. That’s not news—Trump has led by double-digits in every recent poll of the race. But the details are worth a look, as is the way the NBC News report tries to manufacture a competition that doesn’t show up in the poll.
In April, the same poll found Trump with 46% to 31% ahead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. That was a healthy lead, but in June, it’s grown substantially. Trump is now at 51% and DeSantis has dropped to 22%. Between those polls, the big development for Trump was 37 federal criminal indictments. The big development for DeSantis was officially launching his campaign. Ouch.
Literally the only candidate other than DeSantis who lost ground in this poll is Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who dropped from 3% to 2%. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott held steady at 3%. Everyone else gained ground—though everything for the third-tier candidates is within the poll’s 4.38% margin of error. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, aggressively taking the Trump-critic ground Hutchinson had hoped to stake out, entered the poll for the first time with 5%, putting him in fourth place behind Mike Pence, who edged up from 6% to 7%.
The big story in this primary, beyond the evergreen story of Trump’s hold on the Republican base, is DeSantis’ fade from promising candidate-to-be to underwhelming actual candidate. One factor in DeSantis’ poor polling performance may be the millions of dollars in negative ads coming from a Trump-aligned super PAC. But DeSantis has his own super PAC, and he is out on the campaign trail making his pitch to voters. It isn’t going well. Most recently, the New Hampshire Federation of Republican Women slammed DeSantis for scheduling his own campaign event at a time competing with their major annual fundraising lunch, which will be headlined by Trump.
But the traditional media continues to be driven by the need to turn everything into a horse race with an uncertain outcome. So, in an article reporting a poll where the big story is either Trump’s continuing rise despite facing criminal charges or DeSantis’ fade as voters get a look at him, here’s Mark Murray’s second paragraph:
Still, the survey finds half of Republican primary voters say they would consider another leader besides Trump — which suggests a potential opening for a rival to capture the GOP nomination, even as 6 out of 10 Republicans believe the indictments and investigations Trump faces are politically motivated.
Just over half of Republican voters say they currently support Trump—but hey, half of the sample would consider someone else. Seriously? When there are more than half a dozen people in a race and only half of voters say they would consider anyone other than the leader, that is not bad news for the leader. The “potential opening” here is for DeSantis, who lost 9 points over the past couple months, to suddenly gain 30 points, or for one of the candidates languishing in the single digits to stage a Guinness record-worthy surge.
This is one poll, and a recent CNN poll did show Trump’s support dropping by 6 points while DeSantis held steady. But the basic Trump-DeSantis trajectories in the polling average reflect the NBC News poll, with Trump gaining around 5 points and DeSantis losing around 7.
The Republican presidential primary continues to have three tiers: Donald Trump is the top tier, Ron DeSantis is the second tier, and everyone else is the third. The question right now is whether DeSantis can maintain his status.
