A new Suffolk University/USA Today Network poll of Florida, the powerful swing state that is crucial to any presidential nominee, shows Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis crushing President Joe Biden among Florida voters by eight points, 52%-44%. Biden secured the same 44% percentage in a prospective match-up with former President Trump, but Trump only garnered 47% in a much closer match-up.
Not only does DeSantis dominate Biden in the new poll, he also decisively defeats both the leading candidates for the Democratic gubernatorial slot; DeSantis leads former Florida governor Charlie Crist 49%-43% and Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Nikki Fried by a whopping 11 points, 51%-40%.
DeSantis’ huge lead over his Democrat opposition shows how popular he has become in what was once an evenly-divided state. In 2014, incumbent GOP governor Rick Scott faced off against Crist, who had been elected as a Republican in 2006 but then ran for the Senate in 2010 as an independent. Scott defeated Crist 48%-47% in the closest race of the 2014 gubernatorial election cycle.
In 2018, the race was even closer; DeSantis defeated Democrat Andrew Gillum in an incredibly close race, 49.59% to 49.19%. The margin of 0.4% made the election the closest race of the 2018 gubernatorial election cycle. DeSantis was the first Republican gubernatorial candidate to win Jefferson County since Reconstruction.
Thus for DeSantis to lead one Democrat challenger by six points and another by 11 is a huge margin in the state of Florida. Additionally, in the Suffolk University/USA Today Network poll, a huge 58% of respondents believed the United States is on the wrong track; only 28% felt the U.S. was on the right track, and 57% of voters disapproved of how Biden is handling the economy; 36% approved.
The survey was conducted January 26-29.
On Monday, DeSantis ripped those on the political Left attempting smear him after two very small neo-Nazi gatherings held in Orlando and Orange County. DeSantis stated, as reported by The Daily Wire:
So what I’m going to say is these people, these Democrats who are trying to use this as some type of political issue to try to smear me as if I had something with to do that, we’re not playing their game. You know, some jacka**es doing this on the street. First of all, state law enforcement is going to hold them accountable because they were doing stuff on the overpass. So they’re going to absolutely do that. And they should do that.
But I’m not going to have people try to smear me that belong to a political party that has elevated anti-Semites to the halls of Congress like [Minnesota U.S. Rep.] Ilhan Omar, that have played footsie with the BDS [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions] movement, that even had people in their party that have cavorted with Farrakhan. No, we’re going to take our record in Florida and what we’ve done, [including] sign the strongest anti-Semitism bill in the country. We’ve stared down companies who were indulged in BDS like Airbnb. And we’ve won.