2024 poll of Florida: Trump leads DeSantis -- and Hillary leads Biden

(AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

Fine, I’ll be the guy to hype this dumb poll raising the possibility of a Clinton/Biden primary two years from now. Every political blogger understands the truth of this age-old maxim: There’s no content like “Will Hillary run?” content.

Advertisement

What would a Clinton/Biden primary even be about, though? She couldn’t attack him for failing to get Build Back Better and voting-rights legislation over the finish line since that’s the fault of Joe Manchin, not Joe Biden. And there’s zero reason to believe that a President Hillary would have had better luck persuading Manchin to see things her way than President Biden did. On the contrary, the right’s loathing of Clinton would have made it even harder for a Dem representing a red state like West Virginia to cooperate with her White House.

She could go after Biden for his foreign policy, I guess, but how would that work? One of Clinton’s major liabilities with the base of her own party is her hawkishness. If she slammed Biden for withdrawing from Afghanistan, she’d play into the progressive narrative that she’s a warmonger.

And of course, Biden would have an electoral trump card he could play against her, no pun intended: Of the two of them, only one has proved that they’re capable of defeating Trump in a national election.

The significance of this Suffolk poll isn’t that Clinton might primary Biden or would stand a meaningful chance of winning if she did. It’s that Joe Biden is so unpopular in a key swing state right now that Democrats there are willing to choose the “Anyone But Joe” option even if that option is [shudder] Hillary Clinton.

Advertisement

As it stands now, Biden would lose Florida in the 2024 presidential race to a Republican nominee, whether it’s DeSantis or Trump – and he is even trailing in a hypothetical Democratic primary to former presidential nominee and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, by a within-the-margin-of-error tally of 46%-43%.

There is no indication Clinton plans to seek the presidency again in 2024, but the poll results indicate that Biden could be vulnerable to a nomination challenge from her or another prominent Democrat.

“That’s something that’s got to give President Biden pause and other potential Democratic challengers pause,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center.

How much is that result attributable to dissatisfaction with Biden? Well, his favorable rating in this same poll is 43/54. Clinton’s is … 34/57. It would be political suicide for Florida Dems to choose her over him, and yet they still couldn’t resist the opportunity to signal a little buyer’s remorse when a pollster calls.

Relatedly, Suffolk has Biden’s job approval at just 39/57. It might be awhile before Florida turns blue again.

Never mind the Democratic numbers, though. How are we feeling about this result?

The “glass half full” view of that for DeSantis and his fans is that, in the state that knows him best, he’s already within single digits of the guy who owns the party. And unlike Trump, he probably has another two years as governor to enact conservative policies and fight battles with the media that’ll ingratiate him to Republican voters. These numbers jibe with my theory that the reason DeSantis trails Trump by such wide margins in most national polling isn’t because so many more Republican voters prefer Trump to him, it’s because so many more Republicans know who Trump is. It’s a name-recognition problem. As the national primary electorate becomes more familiar with the governor, the gap between him and Trump should close.

Advertisement

The “glass half empty” view is that DeSantis still trails Trump here even among the voters who know him best, among whom his name recognition is presumably already upwards of 100 percent. Trump has spent the past year on the sidelines, largely out of the public eye, while DeSantis has emerged as the most prominent Republican official battling COVID restrictions. And even so, Trump still leads by seven points in Florida. What happens to that margin if and when he begins throwing roundhouses at DeSantis?

The “we don’t actually know whether the glass is half full or half empty” view is that the margin of error in both the Dem and GOP primary polls here is seven points(!) so in reality DeSantis might be leading Trump and Biden might be leading Clinton.

The primary numbers are one of the few discouraging notes for the governor in Suffolk’s data. Of nine politicians tested, he’s the only one with a favorable rating above 50 percent (52/42). He leads the two top Democratic candidates for governor comfortably, enjoying a six-point margin over Charlie Crist and an 11-point advantage over Nikki Fried. And — importantly — he also polls better against Biden head to head than Trump does. DeSantis leads the president by eight points (52/44) while Trump leads by three (47/44). I repeat what I said a few days ago: There’s an emotional choice for Republicans in the 2024 primary and there’s a rational choice. And they’re not the same choice.

Advertisement

One surprising detail, though, is that DeSantis’s numbers on COVID aren’t as strong as I would have expected, especially given his solid favorable rating. Forty-six percent of Floridians say his performance on the pandemic has been excellent or good versus 53 percent who say it’s been fair or poor. At the same time, a majority supports his ban on vaccine requirements and a near-majority says his COVID policies have been good for the state’s economy. I wonder if his overall numbers on COVID are being depressed partly by criticism from the right, from populists who think he never should have issued a stay-at-home order at the start of the pandemic or who resent that he endorsed vaccination in the first half of last year before ultimately clamming up about it. Even a small number of righties who rate him weakly on COVID combined with the overwhelming number of Florida Dems who do so could create a negative majority.

Speaking of clamming up, in lieu of an exit question read this Politico piece about Trump apparently deciding not to continue encouraging his fans to get vaxxed and boosted. “He probably has to balance the position of whether he wants to separate himself against DeSantis but also do no harm,” said one former advisor. “So there was a course correction, where being against mandates is a very safe position and leaving it to personal choice and personal freedom is the best course.”

Advertisement

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Trending on HotAir Videos

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement