Trump holds a 17-point edge among Republicans who are not in college (up from a 10-point lead in February). And while Trump has considerably narrowed the 29-point gap among voters with a four-year degree over the previous month, DeSantis still leads those voters, 40 percent to 28 percent.
Trump has an inherent edge even if he is unable to infiltrate DeSantis’ territory. Trump accelerated a long-term trend that has shifted college-educated people toward the Democratic Party and made the GOP’s “beer trail” the largest cohort among Republican primary voters. Similar divisions characterized the 2016 Republican presidential primary, helping Trump win the nomination and go on to win the presidency.
It’s clear that the 2024 race is still in its early stages because DeSantis hasn’t even declared himself, and the majority of the recent polling has taken place before the news broke that Trump may soon be indicted in New York for allegedly paying hush money during his 2016 campaign to conceal an extramarital affair. There may also be other legal problems along the road.
Despite positive overall trends, there is little agreement among national surveys regarding Trump’s standing. Some indicate that he and DeSantis are roughly tied, while others indicate that the former president is comfortably in the lead for the third consecutive GOP nomination.
Even though the campaign hasn’t really begun yet, recent polling trends show encouraging numbers for Trump and unsettling ones for DeSantis.Two contain trend data that show a Trump bounce in the past month out of the three major media and academic polls that have been issued in the last two weeks by CNN, Monmouth University, and Quinnipiac University.
In addition to the Quinnipiac poll, the Monmouth poll from this week showed Trump ahead of DeSantis by 13 points in head-to-head voting and ahead of the Florida governor by just 1 point. (In a similar vein, Trump led DeSantis by 14 points in the most recent survey among all contenders, compared to a tie last month.)
In the groups where DeSantis had the largest advantages, some of the most pronounced flips in Trump’s favor have taken place. In the two-way race, DeSantis led Trump by 28 points in the February Monmouth survey.
