Results from a new poll show Florida GOP governor Ron DeSantis absolutely crushing the major Democratic candidates challenging him on the gubernatorial race in November 2022.
The Saint Leo University Polling Institute found DeSantis leading former Florida governor Charlie Crist by 16 points, 49%-33%, Annette Taddeo, who was Crist’s running mate in the 2014 gubernatorial election and now serves as a state senator, by a whopping 19 points, 49%-30%, and Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried by a staggering 24 points, 51%-27%.
2022 #FLGov General Election Poll:
Ron DeSantis (R-Inc) 49% (+16)
Charlie Crist (D) 33%
.
Ron DeSantis (R-Inc) 49% (+19)
Annette Taddeo (D) 30%
.
Ron DeSantis (R-Inc) 51% (+24)
Nikki Fried (D) 27% @SaintLeoPolls ~ 500 LV ~ 2/28-3/12https://t.co/0LDWYZjwTa— PollTracker (@PollTrackerUSA) March 30, 2022
The significance of the margin of dominance DeSantis is showing should not be underestimated; in 2010, GOP candidate Rick Scott defeated his Democratic opponent, Alex Sink, 49%-48%. In 2014, as the incumbent, Scott ran against former governor Charlie Crist, who had served as a GOP governor after being elected in 2006, then became an Independent and then lost a Senate race in 2010.
Scott eked out a victory over Crist in 2014, 48%-47%. In 2018, DeSantis squeaked through by a tiny 40,000 votes over Democrat Andrew Gillum in an election in which over 8.2 million votes were cast, a difference of .4%
On Tuesday night DeSantis slammed Disney during a Fox News interview over their opposition to the state’s Parental Rights in Education legislation. As The Daily Wire reported:
“Well, this bill is about providing protections so that they know they can send their young kids to school without them being sexualized, without a school telling a young girl, for example, that she may really be a boy. And if schools are trying to do things that impact the health and well-being of the kids and they’re — they’re undertaking certain services, that parents have a right to know that and provide consent for it,” DeSantis told Fox News host Tucker Carlson. “So, this is a real bill that empowers parents, it protects our kids. And for a company like Disney to say that this bill should have never passed — first of all, Tucker, they weren’t saying anything when it was going through the House. They only started doing this because the mob, the woke mob came after them.”
“But put that aside,” DeSantis continued, “for them to say that them as a California-based company are going to work to take those California values and overturn a law that was duly enacted and, as you said, supported by a strong majority of Floridians, they don’t run this state. They will never run this state as long as I’m governor.”
On Monday, DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education Act, into law. Referring to celebrities in Hollywood opposing the parental rights legislation, he asserted, “Someone told me that there’s even people in Hollywood that are opposed to providing protections for parents and enforcing parents’ rights. The one thing I’ll say about that is, if the people who held up degenerates like Harvey Weinstein as exemplars and as heroes and all that, if those are the types of people opposing us on parents’ rights, I wear that like a badge of honor.”