Nearly two-thirds of conservative voters don't want GOP to nominate Trump in 2024: poll

Most support DeSantis for Republican nomination

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Wednesday, December 14, 2022

Almost two-thirds of Republican and conservative-leaning voters would prefer the GOP nominate someone other than former President Donald Trump for president in 2024 even though they like his policies, according to the findings of a new survey.  

A USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll released Wednesday interviewed over 1,000 likely U.S. voters, finding that nearly 61% of the 374 respondents who identified as Republicans or conservative-leaning independent voters "want Republicans to continue the policies Trump
pursued in office, but with a different Republican nominee for president."

By comparison, 31% said they want "Trump to run and continue the policies he pursued in office."

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In total, 69% of all respondents said they do not want Trump to run in 2024. If the election were held today between Trump and President Joe Biden, 47.3% of respondents said they would vote for Biden, and 39.5% said they would vote for Trump. 

Additionally, 64.7% of Republican and conservative independent respondents said they want Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to run in 2024. About 55.8% of Republican and conservative-leaning respondents support DeSantis for the Republican nomination versus Trump's 33.2% when pitted against each other.

The survey was conducted via phone from last Wednesday through Sunday, with an error margin of 3.1 percentage points for the overall 1,000 voter sample. The 374 Republicans and independents who lean Republican surveyed for the poll had a margin of error of 5.1 points.

David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, believes the results indicate that "Republicans and conservative independents increasingly want Trumpism without Trump." But, he states that DeSantis' chances of defeating Trump in the 2024 GOP primaries depend on how many other candidates enter the race.

"Add in a number of other Republican presidential candidates who would divide the anti-Trump vote, and you have a recipe for a repeat of the 2016 Republican caucuses and primaries," Paleologos said in a statement.  

Last month, Trump announced at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida before a gathering of supporters that he is running for president in 2024.

"There has never been anything like it, this great movement of ours. Never been anything like it, and perhaps there will never be anything like it again," Trump declared. "America's comeback starts right now."

Shortly after his announcement, Rasmussen Reports released the findings of a poll, which found that only a third of American voters, and a little under half of Republicans, wanted Trump to run again.

The survey of 2,000 likely U.S. voters with an error margin of +/- 2 percentage points found that 60% of respondents said Trump should not run for office.

Additionally, 49% of Republican respondents said they think that Trump should run again, while 39% say he should not run again.

The USA Today poll comes shortly after two Trump Organization companies — Trump Corp. and Trump Payroll Corp. — were found guilty on multiple charges of criminal tax fraud.

Although neither Trump nor any of his family members were charged in the case, the prosecution has expressed the possibility that the former president will eventually be charged as the litigation continues.

In an interview with ABC News last month, Trump's former Vice President Mike Pence, who was present at the U.S. Capitol for the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, suggested that there would be better candidates to vote for in 2024 than his former running mate. 

"The people of this country get along pretty well once you get out of politics, and I think they want to see their national leaders reflect that same compassion for the generosity of spirit," Pence said.

The former vice president elaborated on this view while discussing his memoir So Help Me God with American Enterprise Institute President Robert Doar. While he suggested that "the failures of the Biden administration at home and abroad have heightened a desire among people from the country to see us get back to what was working in the Trump-Pence years," Pence concluded that Americans also "want leadership that has the potential of uniting our country around some of our highest ideals and solving some of these long-term problems."

"I think that all begins with civility and respect," Pence added. He envisioned a leader who would "champion the conservative agenda without apology" and "do so with the kind of gentleness and respect that makes common ground possible."

The former vice president predicted that "Republican voters are going to produce a standard bearer who will go back to championing all the things that we advanced, that we proved work for a stronger, more prosperous, more secure America but do it in a way that makes us possible for us to solve some of the long-term intractable problems this country is facing today."